Description:
In recent years, articles in major periodicals from the New York Times Magazine to the Times Literary Supplement have heralded the arrival of a new school of literary studies that promises-or threatens-to profoundly shift the current paradigm. This revolutionary approach, known as Darwinian literary studies, is based on a few simple premises: evolution has produced a universal landscape of the human mind that can be scientifically mapped; these universal tendencies are reflected in the composition, reception, and interpretation of literary works; and an understanding of the evolutionary foundations of human behavior, psychology, and culture will enable literary scholars to gain powerful new perspectives on the elements, form, and nature of storytelling.
Review Quotes: "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