SOURCE: An introduction to Animals in American Literature, University of Illinois Press, 1983, pp. 3-17.

In the following essay, Allen presents an overview of animals in literature throughout history.

Animals¹ have served literature well. They have stood as allegorical figures to represent human nature and as a rich body of metaphors for the inanimate as well as the animate. Beyond their figurative uses, animals have been man's servants, his companions, the objects of his hunt, and the food on his table. And sometimes they have been allowed to play their own parts.

Before man could write he drew pictures of animals on the walls of caves in paint made of their blood, figures that transcend time in their immediacy.² Man looked to the heavens and saw animals sketched in the stars. The spirit that could make the corn grow was envisioned as a bull, a wolf, or even a...