Evolution, Literature, and Film
A Reader
Published on 10. June 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
584 pages
978-0-231-15019-4 (ISBN)
Description
Featuring thirty-nine essential essays by pioneering scholars, scientists, and critics, Evolution, Literature, and Film opens with an introduction to the principles of evolution, with essays from Charles Darwin on the logic of natural selection, Richard Dawkins on the genetic revolution of modern evolutionary theory, Edward O. Wilson on the unity of knowledge, Steven Pinker on the transformation of psychology into an explanatory science, and David Sloan Wilson on the integration of evolutionary theory into cultural critique. Later sections include essays on the adaptive function of the arts, discussions of evolutionary literary theory and film theory, interpretive commentaries on specific works of literature and film, and analyses using empirical methods to explore literary problems. Texts under the microscope include folk- and fairy tales; Homer's Iliad; Shakespeare's plays; works by William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and Zora Neale Hurston; narratives in sci-fi, comics, and slash fiction; and films from Europe, America, Asia, and Africa. Each essay explains the contribution of evolution to a study of the human mind, human behavior, culture, and art.
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A first-rate contribution to the field... Recommended. ChoiceMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
22 illustrations, 4 tables
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
805 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-231-15019-4 (9780231150194)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
06/2010
Columbia University Press
€124.00
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Persons
Brian Boyd is University Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Auckland. The world's leading scholar of Vladimir Nabokov, he is also the author of On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Joseph Carroll is Curators' Professor of English at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. His book Evolution and Literary Theory is a founding text of literary Darwinism, and his collection of essays, Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature, gave the field the name by which it is most commonly known. Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College. He is the author of The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer and Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, and the coeditor of The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative.
Content
Introduction Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, and Jonathan Gottshcall Part I. Evolution and Human Nature Historical Overview 1. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (2008) David M. Buss The Theory of Evolution 2. Recapitulation and Conclusion, from On the Origin of Species (1859) Charles Darwin 3. The Digital River (1995) Richard Dawkins Humankind 4. General Summary and Conclusion, from The Descent of Man (1871) Charles Darwin 5. Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology (1975) Edward O. Wilson 6. The Universal People (1991) Donald E. Brown 7. Sociobiology at Century's End (2000) Edward O. Wilson 8. Evolution and Explanation (2005) Steven Pinker 9. Evolutionary Social Constructivism (2005) David Sloan Wilson Part II. The Riddle of Art 10. Art and Adaptation (1997) Steven Pinker 11. The Arts and Their Interpretation (1998) Edward O. Wilson 12. Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000) Ellen Dissanayake 13. Arts of Seduction (2000) Geoffrey Miller 14. Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, by Fiction John Tooby and Leda Cosmides 15. The Uses of Fiction (2009) Denis Dutton Part III. Literature by Film 16. Getting It All Wrong: Bioculture Critiques Cultural Critique (2006) Brian Boyd 17. Imagining Human Nature Joseph Carroll, by Jonathan Gottschall 18. Two Worlds: The Ghost and the Machine (2008) Edward Slingerland 19. Consilient Literary Interpretation (2002) Marcus Nordlund 20. Humanism and Human Nature in the Renaissance (2005) Robin Headlam Wells 21. The Reality of Illusion (1996) Joseph Anderson 22. Darwin and the Directors: Film, by Emotion Murray Smith 23. What Snakes, by Eagles David Bordwell Part IV. Interpretations 24. Homeric Women: Re-imagining the Fitness Landscape (2008) Jonathan Gottschall 25. New Science, by Old Myth: An Evolutionary Critique of the Oedipal Paradigm (2001) Michelle Scalise Sugiyama 26. The Wheel of Fire and the Mating Game: Explaining the Origins of Tragedy and Comedy (2005) Daniel Nettle 27. Jealousy in Othello (2007) Marcus Nordlund 28. Wordsworth, by Psychoanalysis Nancy Easterlin 29. Vindication and Vindictiveness: Oliver Twist (2007) William Flesch 30. The Cuckoo's History: Human Nature in Wuthering Heights (2008) Joseph Carroll 31. Human Nature, by Utopia Brett Cooke 32. Paternal Confidence in Zora Neale Hurston's "The Gilded Six-Bits" Judith P. Saunders 33. Character in Citizen Kane (1996) Joseph Anderson 34. Convention, by Construction David Bordwell 35. Art and Evolution: The Avant-Garde as Test Case: Spiegelman in The Narrative Corpse (2008) Brian Boyd Part V. Literature as Laboratory 36. Literature, by Science Jonathan Gottschall 37. Slash Fiction and Human Mating Psychology (2004) Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons 38. Cultural Variation Is Part of Human Nature: Literary Universals, by Context-Sensitivity Michelle Scalise Sugiyama 39. Paleolithic Politics in British Novels of the Longer Nineteenth Century Joseph Carroll, by Jonathan Gottschall Bibliography Contributors Index