Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature

✍ Scribed by Joseph Carroll

• Year: 2004
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 309
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In Literary Darwinism, Carroll presents a comprehensive survey of this new movement with a collection of his most important previously published work, along with three new essays. The essays and reviews give commentary on all the major contributors to the field, situate the field as a whole in relation to historical trends and contemporary schools, provide Darwinist readings of major literary texts such as Pride and Prejudice and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and analyze literary Darwinism in relation to the affiliated fields of evolutionary metaphysics, cognitive rhetoric, and ecocriticism. Collecting the essays in a single volume will provide a central point of reference for scholars interested in consulting what the "foremost practicioner" (New York Times) of Darwinian literary criticism has to say about his field.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Introduction......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 28
The Use of Arnold in a Darwinian World......Page 32
Biology and Poststructuralism......Page 44
~Theory,~ Anti-Theory, and Empirical Criticism......Page 58
Out of Eden and to the Left: A Review of John Ellis's Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities......Page 70
Literary Study and Evolutionary Theory: A Review of Books by Alexander Argyros, Walter Koch, Karl Kroeber, Robert Storey, Frederick Turner, and Mark Turner......Page 74
Pinker, Dickens, and the Functions of Literature......Page 92
Wilson's Consilience and Literary Study......Page 98
Ecocriticism, Cognitive Ethology, and the Environments of Victorian Fiction......Page 114
The Deep Structure of Literary Representations......Page 132
Universals in Literary Study......Page 146
Human Universals and Literary Meaning: A Sociobiological Critique of Pride and Prejudice, Villette, O Pioneers!, Anna of the Five Towns, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles......Page 158
Organism, Environment, and Literature......Page 176
Adaptationist Criteria of Literary Value: Assessing Kurten's Dance of the Tiger, Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, and Golding's The Inheritors......Page 192
Human Nature and Literary Meaning: A Theoretical Model Illustrated with a Critique of Pride and Prejudice......Page 216
The Origin of Charles Darwin: A Review of Three Darwin Biographies......Page 248
Modern Darwinism and the Pseudo-Revolutions of Stephen Jay Gould......Page 256
References......Page 276
Index......Page 294