Abstract

This chapter addresses the issue of zoopoetics and hunting practices in early twentieth-century French literature, focusing particularly on the way these literary practices narrate the human quest to capture animal lives. This quest is an anthropological path constituted by semiotic and hermeneutic processes that highlight man’s empathic and problematic relationship with animals. The chapter aims at deciphering the mystery that animals embody and shows how the gesture of predation governs the practices of writing and reading, determining the very structure of the narratives.