The Literary Animal

Paper Text – $29.95
ISBN 978-0-8101-2287-1The Literary Animal
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."
"The essays [in The Literary Animal] include some learned, boldly stimulating inquiries into the possible functions of literature as a category of endeavor and experience. Although such discourse looks nearer to anthropology and psychology than to criticism per se, its breadth of perspective and marshaling of solidly grounded research put to shame what usually passes for interdisciplinarity in literary study." —Frederick Crews