o:2876 “My experiments have taught me great respect for all creatures” Richard Adams’s the plague dogs and the anti-vivisectionist movement en Relying on historical research by A. W. H. Bates, Hilda Kean, Harriet Ritvo, and others, the paper examines Richard Adams’s 1977 novel The Plague Dogs, its stance on scientific experimentation on animals, and its depiction of human−animal relations, against the background of the nineteenth-century anti-vivisectionist movement in Great Britain. Though writing in the 1970s, Adams, it is argued, appropriates, and replicates the anti-vivisectionists’ specific concerns and rhetorical devices – primarily the focus on the human experimenter’s virtue, and the suffering of the animal during experimental procedures – with the general aim of painting animal research as an exercise in sadism with little to no scientific value. The SASE Journal : The Serbian Association for the Study of English, No. 1, 2025, str. 103-122 animal experimentation; anti-vivisectionist movement; Richard Adams; The Plague Dogs 1552101 3042-2930 1552099 10.46630/sase.1.2025.7 2025-04-07T10:44:37.268Z 44 yes 46 Danijela Petković 21000807 0000-0003-4112-1266 2025 application/pdf str. 103-122 414458 https://phaidrani.ni.ac.rs/o:2876 no yes 18 70 11 1066537 1066577 92000001 2025 18A13 18A1308 1 The SASE Journal : The Serbian Association for the Study of English 103 122 Niš : Filozofski fakultet 2025