Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanitys place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin o…
In Literary Darwinism, Carroll presents a comprehensive survey of this new movement with a collection of his most important previously published work, along with three new essays. The essays and reviews give commentary on all the major contributors to the field, situate the fiel…
Upon its publication in 1871, Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex sent shock waves through the scientific community and the public at large. In an original and persuasive study, Bert Bender demonstrates that it is this treatise, rather than any o…
This text demonstrates how Darwin overturned fundamental cultural assumptions in his narratives, how George Eliot and other writers pursued and resisted their contradictory implications in their writings.
Gillian Beer's classic Darwin's Plots, one of the most influential works of literary criticism and cultural history of the last quarter century, is here reissued in an updated edition to coincide with the anniversary of Darwin's birth and of the publication of The Origin of Spec…
This text demonstrates how Darwin overturned fundamental cultural assumptions in his narratives, how George Eliot and other writers pursued and resisted their contradictory implications in their writings.
This text demonstrates how Darwin overturned fundamental cultural assumptions in his narratives, how George Eliot and other writers pursued and resisted their contradictory implications in their writings.
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After a…
