Journal Article

Introduction: Darwin and Literary Studies

Greenberg, Jonathan

2009

Overview

Trumpeted as \"the next big thing\" in The New York Times,3 this minischool proceeds from premises laid out by evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, and is often, though by no means always, hostile to the last four decades of literary theory.4 The basic premise of literary Darwinism is that because the human brain is a product of evolutionary adaptation, and because literature is a product of the human brain, then principles of evolutionary biology can be profitably extended to literature-first to literature as a general cultural entity (why it came about), then to broad literary categories and structures such as narrative, genre, and meter, and finally to the analysis or interpretation of particular works.5 Of course, the sorts of claims that this vein of research generates, along with the objections to them, will be familiar to many readers, and those conversant with the history of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology will readily discern the contours of the old debates that Andrew Brown has dubbed \"the Darwin wars\": those in-house battles among evolutionists where Gould, Lewontin, and Eldredge clashed with Wilson, Dawkins, and Dennett about spandrels, punctuated equilibrium, and the value of regarding the gene as the unit of natural selection. Two other journals, Philosophy and Literature and Poetics Today, have already offered special issues more strictly devoted to literary Darwinism, and collections of essays are now appearing alongside individually authored volumes.\\n Through a ludicrous (and often aesthetically reviled) science fiction scenario, Huxley's fantastical screenplay-novel illumines the very real biopolitical fallout of twentiethcentury social Darwinisms.

• Publisher: Duke University Press,Hofstra University,Duke University Press, NC & IL
• Subject: American literature / Biology / Brain / Competition / Criticism / Darwin, Charles / Essays / Fiction / Forecasts and trends / Gottschall, Jonathan / Gould, Stephen Jay / Influence / Jewish literature / Literary Criticism / Literary Theory / Literature / Literature and Literary Studies / Market trend/market analysis / Novels / Philosophy / Poetics / Psychology / Rand, Ayn (1905-1982) / Russian literature / Scientists / South African literature / Studies / Works / Zizek, Slavoj