Literature, Animals and Oppression: help me write my dissertation reading list?

[JBI]

There is an old text in the Chinese narrative describing how the Tang emperor Xuanzong bought an expensive dozen of dancing horses from Central Asia. upon the rise of the Anshi rebellion, the prized dancing horses were seized and their captors, not knowing what they were, tried to convert them into war horses. As the story goes, the more the horses were beaten, the more they would dance, their dancing infuriated their new owners, so they beat them more, causing them to dance even more, until they were eventually beaten to death.

The story can be found in Chinese history: a Sourcebook.

[StevieElizabeth]

Thanks guys, this is all really helpful (even if it doesn't end up on a reading list, it's conjuring a lot of ideas).

[kev67]

Do you mean books in which animals are animals, or books in which animals are like people? Obviously there is a lot of oppression in Animal Farm, and some in Watership Down, but the characters in those books are not really animals. I seem to remember another of Richard Adams' books was about a pair of dogs that escaped from a research laboratory, but I did not read very much of it.

[kelby_lake]

I seem to remember another of Richard Adams' books was about a pair of dogs that escaped from a research laboratory, but I did not read very much of it.

Yep. It's The Plague Dogs.

The films of both Adams' books are traumatic!

[Des Essientes]

Regarding the abuse of horses there is Doestoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, or maybe it's The Idiot, wherein the peasant driver of an overloaded cart decides to whip its horse to death if he can't pull it. This is often said to have inspired the newly insane Nietzsche to run out into an Italian steet and embrace a draft-horse being whipped.

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five also has a scene wherein the protagonist is driving a cart through devestated Dresden and when two civilians shame him, regarding the deplorable state of its horse, Billy Pilgrim notices the animal's agony for the first time and weeps.

One of the best pieces of writing on man's sins against horses is found in Chuang Tzu. Wherein the sage admonishes a certain Po Lo, from whom the sport's name is derived, for subverting horses' nature by forcing them to wear bridles etc:
"HORSES' HOOFS ARE MADE for treading frost and snow, their coats for keeping out wind and cold. To munch grass, drink from the stream, lift up their feet and gallop this is the true nature of horses. Though they might possess great terraces and fine halls, they would have no use for them.
Then along comes Po Lo "I'm good at handling horses!" he announces, and proceeds to singe them, shave them, pare them, brand them, bind them with martingale and crupper, tie them up in stable and stall. By this time two or three out of ten horses have died. He goes on to starve them, make them go thirsty, race them, prance them, pull them into line, force them to run side by side, in front of them the worry of bit and rein, behind them the terror of whip and crop. By this time over half the horses have died."
http://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu1.html#9

The play Equus also deals with this subject and makes a compelling argument for horses being truly Christlike in their submission to man.