http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2
There's a folk belief that domestic animals gain the power of human speech on Christmas Eve — and often have things to say that their human owners would just as soon not hear. I discussed some folkloric and fictional examples in a couple of earlier Christmas-eve posts: "Talking animals: miracle or curse?" (12/24/2004)and "Watch out for those talking animals tonight" (12/24/2013).
For most of us, talking animals are kind of cute, evoking memories of stories like Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester (1903). So I was not expecting a web search for "talking animals" to yield the following Product Warnings on a novel by D. Reneé [sic] Bagby, Adrienne:
This title contains adult language, talking animals, violence, and scenes of near rape.
As I observed in the cited earlier posts, the discourses of Christmas-Eve talking animals are often uncomfortable or even dangerous. Some of the (scholarly and fictional) citations:
Marguerite Cunliffe-Owen, The Tribulations of a Princess (1901)
Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Chapter IX (1912)
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, "Christmas Customs in Many Lands", (Monthly Bulletin, December 1919)
H. H. Munro (Saki), "Bertie's Christmas Eve" (1919)
And I noted that this superstition might have something in common with what Horace called "December Liberty" — Wikipedia puts it like this:
Saturnalian license also permitted slaves to enjoy a pretense of disrespect for their masters, and exempted them from punishment. It was a time for free speech: the Augustan poet Horace calls it "December liberty." In two satires set during the Saturnalia, Horace has a slave offer sharp criticism to his master.
One of the cited passages is from Satyrarum Libri 2.7, starting like this:
Horatii servus libertate usus Saturnalitia festive illum et acriter obiurgat.
'Iamdudum ausculto et cupiens tibi dicere servos pauca reformido.'
'Davusne?'
'ita, Davus, amicum mancipium domino et frugi quod sit satis, hoc est, ut vitale putes.'
'age libertate Decembri, quando ita maiores voluerunt, utere: narra.'
Or in Theodore Alois Buckley's 1869 revision of Christopher Smart's English translation:
One of Horace's slaves, making use of that freedom which was allowed them at the Saturnalia, rates his master in a droll and severe manner.
"I have a long while been attending [to you], and would fain speak a few words [in return; but, being] a slave, I am afraid."
"What, Davus?"
"Yes, Davus, a faithful servant to his master and an honest one, at least sufficiently so: that is, for you to think his life in no danger."
"Well (since our ancestors would have it so), use the freedom of December: speak on."
Buckley's footnote on this passage:
The particular design of the Saturnalia was to represent that equality, which reigned among mankind in the reign of Saturn, when they lived according to the laws of nature, without distinction of conditions. Horace here introduces a slave, asserting that a wise man alone is free, and that real liberty consists in not obeying our passions, or being enslaved to vice. He boldly reproaches his master with his faults and follies. His reasoning is so natural, sensible, and pressing, that Horace, not being able to answer him, at last loses his temper, and is obliged to make use of menaces to silence him.
Animals endowed with the ability to talk, like servants given the license to talk freely, are a threat to their masters and indeed to humans in general. And Catherine Elick (Talking Animals in Children's Fiction: A Critical Study) notes, in reference to Alice in Wonderland, that
Alice […] does not typically win the verbal battles she wages with the animals of Wonderland. In her waking world, Alice has come to expect animals to be subordinate and silent, at least in terms of speech. Wielding the power of the word in Wonderland, they now compete with Alice as equals, especially since most of them speak in the same privileged sociolect that Alice and her creator Carroll use. […] Alice's exasperated comment late in the novel — "How the creatures order one about about, and make one repeat lessons!" (82) — acknowledges her recognition that she is engaged in a battle with the Wonderland creatures, one in which she who controls the language holds the power. […]
Alice's first line of defense against this violent discourse is to repress her rage and indulge in the polite expressions that her upbringing has equipped her with as weapons of dominance. […] However, as the novel progresses, Alice abandons politeness and finds that she competes best with the characters of Wonderland when she indulges in the same blunt, rude language that they speak. Ultimately, the familiarity of the carnival square gives Alice license to speak candidly, to give vent to what Bakhtin calls "the outspoken carnivalistic word". […]
[M]ost of the conversations in Wonderland are marked not only by anger but also by incompletion. In many cases, the conversations trail off, often accompanied by the threat of violence […]
Still, I wonder what elevates the talking animals in Ms. Bagby's novel to the level of "violence and near rape".
