The aping apes of Poe and Wright : race, animality, and mimicry in "the murders in the Rue Morgue" and native son

In his "Discourse on the Method," for instance, René Descartes characterized animals as automatons, machines that can sometimes imitate humans-as do parrots who learn to mimic human speech-but nevertheless lack the faculties of reason that elevate humans above all other organisms.3 Notwithstanding the Cartesian division between animal reaction and human response, the premodern legal practice of prosecuting and exterminating animals for their crimes presumed precisely this capacity for accountability. In The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906), E. P. Evans catalogued a number of such cases from the ninth through the nineteenth centuries, including one in the early sixteenth century that involved an unspecified number of rats who destroyed the barley crop of a French province.4 When the defendants failed to appear in court, their attorney explained their absence by citing the "serious perils" that accompanied their journey, "owing to the unwearied vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats" (19)