Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice

Joseph Carroll

Mar 2011 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

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.

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.