“Brilliant Women” and their Dogs (E. Browning, W. Wolf, M. Yourcenar)

Abstract

The article elucidates several aspects of the animalistic theme embodiment in
literature, the features of human-animal relations, and their reflection in literary texts. The emphasis is
laid on the personal and creativity-based relationships between M.Yourcenar and W. Wolf, typological
similarities and differences in the interpretation of the image of a dog in the works by E. Browning,
W. Wolf, and M. Yourcenar.
The article substantiates the intertextual interaction, intertextual echoes in the works of different
authors, interprets the ways of their expression and the types of intertextuality in the novels by W.
Wolf and M. Yourcenar. The author highlights the issue of the place and significance of a womanwriter in the literary process of the second half of the XIX–XX centuries and traces the development
of feminist ideas, using as a case study the essays by W. Wolf.
In the analysis of W. Wolf’s work Flush: Biography, the transformational processes occurring
in the biographical discourse of the twentieth-century literature are in the focus, in particular, the
narrative model of the work, via which the biography of E. Barrett-Browning is described in close
interrelation with the biography of her Cocker Spaniel Flush. Without anthropomorphizing dogcharacter, the writer talks about the interpenetration of human and animal worlds, uses the effect of
reflection, turns to synesthesia in describing the reactions of the dog.
M. Yourcenar’s essay A Series of Sketches for Howe-Howe is considered in terms of the
philosophical and environmental views of the author. The image of a dog appears in it as a specific
addressee of the narrative and as a generalized embodiment of the universe.
The author interprets animalistic images in inter-connection with the genus-genre nature of
the analyzed works and the creative conceptions of the writers (romanticism, modernism). The key
findings of the study reinforce the assumption about the transition from the idea of the unity of a
human and nature in romanticism (E. Browning) to the crisis of the anthropocentric worldview model
in the age of modernism (W. Wolf, M. Yourcenar)