Animals in Saki's Short Stories within the Context of Imperialism: A Non-Anthropocentric Approach

Abstract

This thesis examines how the late Victorian and Edwardian British short story writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), better known by his penname Saki, opposes the dominant imperial discourse of his period and how he criticises it, through the analysis of his short stories Mrs Packletide s Tiger, Esmé, Tobermory, The Penance, The Storyteller, Sredni Vashtar, The Music on the Hill, Gabriel-Ernest and Laura with respect to speciesism and animism. Although, under the influence of postcolonial theories, most of the writers of the period are claimed to be pro-imperial and advocating and justifying imperialism in their works, especially the introduction of the term Negative Auto-Occidentalism has shed light on the fact that there were also anti-imperialist people in the West and especially many writers included the criticism of the imperialism in their works.