Description
Book SynopsisThe study of literature has expanded to include an evolutionary perspective. Its premise is that the literary text and literature as an overarching institution came into existence as a product of the same evolutionary process that gave rise to the human species. In this view, literature is an evolutionary adaptation that functions as any other adaptation does, as a means of enhancing survivability and also promoting benefits for the individual and society. Text in the Natural World is an introduction to the theory and a survey of topics pertinent to the evolutionary view of literature. After a polemical, prefatory chapter and an overview of the pertinent aspects of evolutionary theory itself, the book examines integral building blocks of literature and literary expression as effects of evolutionary development. This includes chapters on moral sense, symbolic thought, literary aesthetics in general, literary ontology, the broad topic of form, function and device in literature,
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Polemical Introduction – The Evolving Theory – Moral Sense, Amoral World – Symbolic Thought – Evolutionary Aesthetics – Ontology – Form, Function and Device – Narrative – Thematics – Thematic Study: The Fauna in Maupassant’s Fiction, or A Page from Darwin’s Book – Bibliography – Appendix.
