The Early Evolutionary Imagination

Literature and Human Nature
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-030-82737-3
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 518 g

Reihe: Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance

Darwinian evolution is an imaginative problem that has been passed down to us unsolved. It is our most powerful explanation of humanity’s place in nature, but it is also more cognitively demanding and less emotionally satisfying than any myth. From the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859, evolution has pushed our capacity for storytelling into overdrive, sparking fairy tales, adventure stories, political allegories, utopias, dystopias, social realist novels, and existential meditations. Though this influence on literature has been widely studied, it has not been explained psychologically. This book argues for the adaptive function of storytelling, integrates traditional humanist scholarship with current knowledge about the evolved and adapted human mind, and calls for literary scholars to reframe their interpretation of the first authors who responded to Darwin.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jonsson, Emelie

Fachgebiete

• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Evolutionsbiologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1.       Chapter 1: Using Evolution to Explain the Evolutionary Imagination.- Chapter 2 Myth-Making in Early Evolutionary Thought.- Chapter 3: Darwinism in Literature.- Chapter 4: From Adventure to Utopia.- Chapter 5: Jack London’s Evolutionary Imagination.- Chapter 6: H. G. Wells’s Evolutionary Imagination.- Chapter 7: Joseph Conrad’s Evolutionary Imagination.- The Unimaginable Place in Nature.

Über Autor(innen)

Emelie Jonsson is Assistant Professor of English literature at the Arctic University of Norway, UiT, and Associate Editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. Her research centers on the friction between human psychology and naturalistic cosmology.