L’ASIE À TRAVERS LES YEUX DE L’ANIMAL: MÉMOIRES D’UN ÉLÉPHANT BLANC DE JUDITH GAUTIER ET THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHINESE DOG DE FLORENCE AYSCOUGH
ASIA THROUGH ANIMAL’S EYES: MEMOIRS OF A WHITE ELEPHANT BY JUDITH GAUTIER AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CHINESE DOG BY FLORENCE AYSCOUGH

Summary/Abstract: At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Judith Gautier and Florence Ayscough respectively offered French and American audiences a zoo-centric narrative in which Asia is described through the eyes of an animal. This article compares the issues at stake in these two zoo-centric narratives, which renew representations of the Asian continent while exploiting very different writing strategies. In Judith Gautier's Mémoires d'un éléphant blanc, published in France in 1894, the eponymous white elephant travels from his native Laos to India, taking a critical look at the Western presence in Asia through a peaceful, animalistic plea. Judith Gautier's elephant can thus be likened to the narrator of Florence Ayscough's The Autobiography of a Chinese Dog, published in the USA in 1926. Yo Fei, the writer's dog, follows his mistress on her journeys between the Far East and the West and, as a true ethnographer, instinctively compares the two cultural worlds he explores. The aim of this article is to compare these two representations of Asia through the prism of the non-human, inviting Western public not only to move beyond ethnocentrism but also to question his place in the natural harmony.

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