Humanity/Animality: Cross-Species Empathy in Contemporary Australian Fiction

This thesis asks: what is the value of empathy in navigating the problems posed by ecological crisis. I build a case for the value of literary texts in promoting thinking about “what is to be done” in the context of ecological crisis, and attempt to develop a ‘tensive’ view of empathy by examining different modes of cross-species empathy between humans and other animals in three major works of contemporary Australian fiction: Jennifer Mills’ Dyschronia, Erin Hortle’s The Octopus and I and Laura Jean McKay’s The Animals in That Country.