E-Book Overview
In recent years, articles in major periodicals from the New York Times Magazine to the Times Literary Supplement have heralded the arrival of a new school of literary studies that promises-or threatens-to profoundly shift the current paradigm. This revolutionary approach, known as Darwinian literary studies, is based on a few simple premises: evolution has produced a universal landscape of the human mind that can be scientifically mapped; these universal tendencies are reflected in the composition, reception, and interpretation of literary works; and an understanding of the evolutionary foundations of human behavior, psychology, and culture will enable literary scholars to gain powerful new perspectives on the elements, form, and nature of storytelling.The goal of this book is to overcome some of the widespread misunderstandings about the meaning of a Darwinian approach to the human mind generally, and literature specifically. The volume brings together scholars from the forefront of the new field of evolutionary literary analysis-both literary analysts who have made evolution their explanatory framework and evolutionist scientists who have taken a serious interest in literature-to show how the human propensity for literature and art can be properly framed as a true evolutionary problem. Their work is an important step toward the long-prophesied synthesis of the humanities and what Steven Pinker calls "the new sciences of human nature."
E-Book Content
THE LITERARY ANIMAL
THE LITERARY ANIMAL Evolution and the Nature of Narrative
Edited by
Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson Forewords by
E. O. Wilson and Frederick Crews Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu Copyright © 2005 by Northwestern University Press. “Literature, Science, and Human Nature” copyright © 2001 by Ian McEwan. Published 2005. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 10
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ISBN 0-8101-2286-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-8101-2287-1 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The literary animal : evolution and the nature of narrative / Edited by Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson ; forewords by E. O. Wilson and Frederick Crews. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8101-2286-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8101-2287-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Literature and science. 2. Evolution (Biology) in literature. 3. Human beings in literature. 4. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Gottschall, Jonathan. II. Wilson, David Sloan. PN55.L39 2005 809'.9336—dc22 2005004290 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
Contents E. O. Wilson Foreword from the Scientific Side vii Frederick Crews Foreword from the Literary Side xiii Jonathan Gottschall and David Sloan Wilson Introduction: Literature—a Last Frontier in Human Evolutionary Studies xvii PART I: E VOLUTION
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L ITERARY T HEORY
Ian McEwan Literature, Science, and Human Nature 5 David Sloan Wilson Evolutionary Social Constructivism 20 Dylan Evans From Lacan to Darwin 38 Daniel Nettle What Happens in Hamlet? Exploring the Psychological Foundations of Drama 56 Joseph Carroll Human Nature and Literary Meaning: A Theoretical Model Illustrated with a Critique of Pride and Prejudice 76 Marcus Nordlund The Problem of Romantic Love: Shakespeare and Evolutionary Psychology 107 Robin Fox Male Bonding in the Epics and Romances 126
PART II: T HE E VOLUTIONARY R IDDLE
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Brian Boyd Evolutionary Theories of Art 147 Michelle Scalise Sugiyama Reverse-Engineering Narrative: