Clarin's Animals: Reading Leopoldo Alas' Short Fiction Through the Darwinian Revolution‪.‬

ARGUABLY the most well-known of Leopoldo Alas' ("Clarin's") Spanish predecessors in the art of the animal-centered narrative is Cervantes. In the novela ejemplar "El coloquio de los perros," Cipion and Berganza are dogs who one night find themselves endowed with the capacity for speech and complex thought. In the opening dialogue, they reflect on these newfound abilities: Cipion defines the generally held distinction between humans and animals: the former are rational while the latter are not. That Cervantes bestows the capability of reason on his two animal interlocutors shocks not only the dogs themselves but the reader as well: it contradicts established laws of nature. The two dogs utilize their newfound intelligence and capacity for speech to make empirical observations about human nature and reflect on its larger consequences in their surroundings. His animal protagonists thus allow Cervantes an additional latitude for irony, criticism and moralizing from an animal perspective positioned to capture the nuances of human behavior, but, in the context of the tale, without interference from humans themselves. Almost three centuries later, Clarin presents his own version of the rational, analytical animal in a number of short stories published during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Parting from Cervantes' tradition, Clarin endows his animal-protagonists with the capability for reason and emotion, and reveals their thoughts to the reader. By inverting normal conceptions of animals as irrational brutes to the type of rational citizens embodied by Cipion and Berganza, Clarin carefully leads the human reader toward the same question Cervantes poses: If animals can think, what do they think about us?