As the founder and leading practitioner of ‘literary Darwinism, ‘ Joseph Carroll remains at the forefront of a major movement in literary studies. Signaling key new developments in this approach, Reading Human Nature contains trenchant theoretical essays, innovative empirical research, sweeping surveys of intellectual history, and sophisticated interpretations of specific literary works, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wuthering Heights, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Hamlet. Evolutionists in the social sciences have succeeded in delineating basic motives but have given far too little attention to the imagination. Carroll makes a compelling case that literary Darwinism is not just another ‘school’ or movement in literary theory. It is the moving force in a fundamental paradigm change in the humanities—a revolution. Psychologists and anthropologists have provided massive evidence that human motives and emotions are rooted in human biology. Since motives and emotions enter into all the products of a human imagination, humanists now urgently need to assimilate a modern scientific understanding of ‘human nature.’ Integrating evolutionary social science with literary humanism, Carroll offers a more complete and adequate understanding of human nature.
Table of Content
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Acknowledgments
Part One: Adaptationist Literary Theory
1. An Evolutionary Paradigm for Literary Study, 3 with Two Sequels
2. An Evolutionary
Apologia pro Vita Mea
3. A Meta-Review of
The Art Instinct
4. Three Scenarios for Literary Darwinism
Part Two: Interpretive Practice
5. Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in
The Picture of Dorian Gray
6. The Cuckoo’s History: Human Nature in
Wuthering Heights
7. Intentional Meaning in
Hamlet: An Evolutionary Perspective
Part Three: Empirical Literary Study: An Experiment in Web-Based Research
8. Agonistic Structure in Victorian Novels: Doing the Math
9. Quantifying Agonistic Structure in
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Part Four: Evolutionary Intellectual History
10. The Power of Darwin’s Vision
11. The Science Wars in a Long View: Putting the Human in Its Place
12. A Darwinian Revolution in the Humanities
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Joseph Carroll is Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and coeditor (with Alice Andrews) of the journal
The Evolutionary Review, also published by SUNY Press. His books include
Evolution and Literary Theory and
Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. He has produced an edition of
On the Origin of Species. He is coeditor (with Brian Boyd and Jonathan Gottschall) of
Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader.
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