Genre, tradition and renewal: Animal autobiography and poetics of the multicentric self

Animal autobiography thrived as an ethics-changing genre in the late nineteenth century, especially with the publication of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty (1877/1922), in which the equine autobiographer recounts his life of being sold and resold to a series of owners from a peaceful paddock to the harsh streets of London. Sewell's landmark work, with affective descriptions of how the working animal is subject to the bearing rein and the cruel treatment it occasions, propelled the animal rights movement (Pearson, 2020, p. 124). Influenced mainly by the culture of sensibility and the literary trend of sentimentalism, the animal autobiography assimilates the sensory experiences that were valued as foundations for moral values and behaviours during the Victorian period (Menely, 2014). Sensing the world from an animal vantage point through visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory perceptions, to a great extent, defines the genre. Through the trope of anthropomorphism, the ascription of human traits to nonhuman animals, authors of animal autobiographies aim to position readers within the subjective experience of nonhuman animals, and gives vicarious access to how animals purportedly perceive and navigate the world through their senses and instincts.

Given the employment of anthropomorphism, animal autobiography is inevitably a genre of ethological and epistemological entanglements, oscillating between the authenticity of nonhuman life and the animistic imagination it evokes. Accordingly, scholarship on animal autobiography often revolves around the thematic child-animal analogy and the structural suppression of women, enslaved people and other marginalised groups implied in the focal animal characters (Cosslett, 2006; Ratelle, 2014). It continuously draws attention to social and environmental injustices, and whether the assumption of animal perspectives for ethical or pedagogical purposes will legitimise the languaged animal as a real-life subject (DeMello, 2013; Nyman, 2016; Spencer, 2020). Paradoxically, our dependence on language for reasoning about the world makes anthropomorphism necessary, revealing what Kari Weil (2012, p. 9) calls "the tragedy of language", which ensues "when we acknowledge that there is another consciousness there, a consciousness we desperately desire to know through language, but that may remain impenetrable". To come to grips with the possibility of literary representation, however, anthropomorphic writing, such as animal autobiography, can also advance the efforts of animal compassion agendas" and awaken "an affection for nature and the desire to care for it" (Gilmour, 2020, p. 2).

The balance between animal agency and human authorship has posed challenges for animal autobiography, but it has persevered through evolution and adaptation, evidenced by the iconic pieces such as Leo Tolstoy's "Strider: The Story of a Horse" (1886/2002), Franz Kafka's "Report for an Academy" (1917/1983), Michael Morpurgo's War Horse (1982/2012), and Yoko Tawada's Memoirs of a Polar Bear (2016). A notable addition to the genre is Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan (2012), a Newbery Award-winning novel retelling the life of a real silverback gorilla who was released to Zoo Atlanta after enduring captivity in a shopping mall for 9855 days (27 years). In view of the shifting contexts from the late-eighteenth century onwards, how has the animal autobiography genre been conventionalised? What provides narrative motivation for the renewal of its genre conventions? To what extent is the autobiographical self, as the locus of scholarly discussion, understood in a way that transcends the factual/fictional polarity? Noting the generic tradition and renewal, as well as the ethical ramifications, in animal autobiography, this study examines how various aspects of animal selfhood are constructed and enacted to render varieties of autobiographical experiences. At the intersection of autobiography/autofiction studies and literary animal studies, this article first traces the genre's tradition and representational strategies through the representative works The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse (1784/1846) by Dorothy Kilner and Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. Based on a "self"-oriented analysis, the article then discusses the genre's potential for ethical renewal, as in Applegate's The One and Only Ivan. The readings of these past and present animal autobiographies lead to my proposition of the poetics of the multicentric self to better understand the entanglement of narrative pleasures and the increasingly prominent ethical stakes that the genre entails.

The article situates animal autobiography within debates on anthropomorphism, authenticity, and the limits of representing nonhuman subjectivity. It invokes Lejeune’s autobiographical pact (author, narrator, protagonist identity) to mark animal autobiography as a generic outlier authored by humans, and connects this to Doubrovsky’s concept of autofiction, emphasizing the inherently imaginative, constructed nature of any self-representation. Herman’s notion of narration beyond the human and Middelhoff’s framing of animal autobiography as literary auto-zoography highlight tensions between fictionality and claims to autobiographical truth and the anthropocentrism of auto/biography. The piece engages Weil’s and Oliver’s ethical frameworks (attention, witnessing) to argue for the potential of anthropomorphic writing to foster compassion while acknowledging the “tragedy of language.” The review further develops critical anthropomorphism (Burghardt; Weil) as an approach combining human inference with ethological attention to animal individuality, and positions animal autobiography alongside testimonial genres (Cosslett), child-animal analogies, and broader cultural discourses on sensibility and ethics (Menely; Gilmour). These threads set up the analysis of Kilner’s The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse, Sewell’s Black Beauty, and Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan as exemplars showing multi-scaled perceptions, ethics of witness, and genre renewal.

This is a qualitative, comparative literary analysis at the intersection of autobiography/autofiction studies and literary animal studies. The study conducts close readings of three representative animal autobiographies across periods: Dorothy Kilner’s The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse (1784/1846), Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877/1922), and Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan (2012). It analyzes narrative strategies and self-construction in first-person animal narrators, focusing on: (1) multi-scaled perceptions of an autofictional self; (2) deployment of critical anthropomorphism informed by ethology; and (3) the ethics of witness and testimonial functions. Theoretically, it engages Philippe Lejeune’s autobiographical pact, Serge Doubrovsky’s autofiction, Frederike Middelhoff’s auto-zoography, David Herman’s narration beyond the human, and Jacques Derrida’s reflections in The Animal That Therefore I Am. It examines textual evidence (e.g., quoted passages from Black Beauty; Ivan’s minimalist language) to trace how animal selves are performed as autofictional, human-animal hybrid, critical human, and literary selves, and culminates in proposing a poetics of the multicentric self.

• The genre of animal autobiography persists through a set of recurring strategies: multi-scaled perceptions of an autofictional self, critical anthropomorphism that respects species-specific behaviors and individuality, and an ethics of witness that mobilizes readerly empathy and ethical response.
• In Kilner’s The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse, the animal narrator operates as a crossover figure, blending didactic moralization with species-typical traits, illustrating multi-scaled perception and early forms of critical anthropomorphism.
• Sewell’s Black Beauty exemplifies the ethics of witness; first-person equine testimony renders suffering (e.g., breaking-in, bearing rein, overwork) in vivid sensory terms and includes human bystander interventions, aligning the text with testimonial genres and moral reform.
• Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan renews the genre under Anthropocene concerns and liminality between wild and captive states. Ivan’s self is parsed into four interacting modalities: (1) an autofictional self negotiating public labels; (2) a human-animal hybrid self produced by captivity and mimicry; (3) a critical human-like ethical self, commenting on human behaviors and environmental responsibility (e.g., zoos as places where “humans make amends”); and (4) a literary self shaped by concise, epigrammatic, minimalist language that conveys moral poignancy and a crescendo to liberation (e.g., the “outside at last” list of nouns).
• The study proposes a “poetics of the multicentric self”: (1) anthropomorphic imagination fused with empathy and defamiliarization to extend attention to animal alterity; (2) an integrated first-person persona where the author’s and animal’s autobiographical identities converge performatively; and (3) multiple perceptual centers coexisting without a singular center, enabling anti-anthropocentric readings.
• The framework illuminates how contemporary animal autobiographies can address broader ethical and environmental issues (e.g., captivity debates, human-animal interdependence) while maintaining narrative pleasure and authority.

The findings address the research questions by showing how animal autobiography has been conventionalized around specific narrative strategies that negotiate fact/fiction and human/animal boundaries, and by identifying motivations for renewal in contemporary contexts (e.g., Anthropocene, captivity ethics). By reading Kilner and Sewell, the study clarifies the genre’s traditional mechanisms—didacticism, testimonial witnessing, and anthropomorphic focalization—while Applegate’s Ivan demonstrates how these conventions evolve to accommodate liminal identities and environmental ethics. The proposed poetics of the multicentric self reframes the autobiographical “I” as a performative intersection of authenticity, autofiction, and literary authority across multiple centers of perception, thereby moving beyond the factual/fictional polarity. This multicentric model underscores the ethical stakes of representing nonhuman subjectivity, encouraging readers to attend to animal alterity and re-evaluate anthropocentric assumptions. It suggests that critical anthropomorphism and testimonial witnessing can foster compassion and action without collapsing species differences, offering a nuanced pathway for ethical engagement and genre vitality.

The study concludes that animal autobiography, shaped by strategies such as multi-scaled perceptions of an autofictional self, critical anthropomorphism, and an ethics of witness, portrays animals as ontologically and morally significant subjects while reflecting specific historical and social positions. These strategies coalesce into a multicentric animal self, where performative autofiction intersects with the authenticity and authority of a first-person animal voice. Drawing on Derrida’s insights, the proposed poetics of the multicentric self encourages deep engagement with writing and reading practices in the Anthropocene, prompting ethical reassessment and responsibility toward the inner lives of other sentient beings. The genre’s capacity to balance narrative pleasure with ethical imperatives positions it for continued renewal, as exemplified by The One and Only Ivan, and invites future work to explore broader environmental crises (e.g., extinction, biodiversity loss) within multicentric frameworks.