Abstract:
Proposed first volume of “classic” essays in the emerging field of evolutionary approaches to literature and art, selected co-editors (Joseph Carroll and Jonathan Gottschall), selected and edited texts, co-wrote introduction, contributed two of own essays, compiled index. Helped select background essays from biologists (Darwin, Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, etc.), psychologists (Pinker, Buss), anthropologists, evolutionary theorists of art. Selected all film material, and edited two most demanding literary contributions for length and style. Major intervention in direction of literary studies, from major university press. Already used as course textbook, and cited heavily in research (up to 20 separate articles cited in a single recent MA thesis). From reviews: “first-rate” (Choice); “goes beyond what one might hope for. . . . as Boyd points out . . . what Brian Boyd deems a multilevel approach which he similarly exhibits in his chapter on Art Spiegelman and an experimental visual work, a graphic exquisite corpse in which Spiegelman participated along with 68 other comic artists. Here and elsewhere, the editors are to be commended for prominently displaying the limit cases, the “exception[s] that prove the rule,” instead of merely plucking the low-hanging fruit of stories in which characters act transparently and facilely in line with evolutionary expectations. . . . a galvanizing set of blueprints. . . . the state-of-the-art in a nascent field.” Tim Horvath, Evolution and Human Behavior 32 (2011).