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Darwinian literary studies (a.k.a. Literary Darwinism) is a branch of literary criticism that studies literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection, including gene-culture coevolution. It represents an emerging trend of neo-Darwinian thought in intellectual disciplines beyond those traditionally considered as evolutionary biology: evolutionary psychology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, behavioural genetics, evolutionary epistemology, and other such disciplines.〔For an overview of evolutionary research in the human sciences, see (Human Behavior and Evolution Society )〕 ==Scope== Literary Darwinists use concepts from evolutionary biology and the evolutionary human sciences to formulate principles of literary theory and interpret literary texts. They investigate interactions between human nature and the forms of cultural imagination, including literature and its oral antecedents. By “human nature,” they mean a pan-human, genetically transmitted set of dispositions: motives, emotions, features of personality, and forms of cognition. Because the Darwinists concentrate on relations between genetically transmitted dispositions and specific cultural configurations, they often describe their work as "biocultural critique.”〔For introductory commentaries on evolutionary studies in the humanities, see (Harold Fromm, "The New Darwinism in the Humanities" ), ''Hudson Review''; (D. T. Max, "The Literary Darwinists" ), ''The New York Times''; (John Whitfield, "Literary Darwinism: Textual Selection" ), ''Nature''; (Mark Czarnecki, "The Other Darwin" ), ''Walrus Magazine''.〕 Darwinian literary studies arose in part as a result of dissatisfaction with the poststructuralist and postmodernist philosophies that came to dominate literary study during the 1970s and 1980s. In particular, the Darwinists took issue with the argument that discourse constructs reality. The Darwinists argue that biologically grounded dispositions constrain and inform discourse. This argument runs counter to what evolutionary psychologists assert is the central idea in the "Standard Social Science Model": that culture wholly constitutes human values and behaviors.〔On the conceptual character of poststructuralism, see Terry Eagleton, "Post-structuralism" in ''Literary Theory: An Introduction'', (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983); (M. H. Abrams, "The Transformation of English Studies: 1930-1995" ), ''Daedalus''; and Jonathan Culler, ''Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction'' (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997). For Darwinist critiques of "cultural constructivism," see (Brian Boyd, "Getting It All Wrong" ); and (Joseph Carroll, "Pluralism, Poststructuralism, and Evolutionary Theory," ).〕 Many literary Darwinists aim not just at creating another “approach” or “movement” in literary theory; they aim at fundamentally altering the paradigm within which literary study is now conducted. They want to establish a new alignment among the disciplines and ultimately to encompass all other possible approaches to literary study. They rally to Edward O. Wilson’s cry for “consilience” among all the branches of learning. Like Wilson, they envision nature as an integrated set of elements and forces extending in an unbroken chain of material causation from the lowest level of subatomic particles to the highest levels of cultural imagination. And like Wilson, they regard evolutionary biology as the pivotal discipline uniting the hard sciences with the social sciences and the humanities. They believe that humans have evolved in an adaptive relation to their environment. They argue that for humans, as for all other species, evolution has shaped the anatomical, physiological, and neurological characteristics of the species, and they think that human behavior, feeling, and thought are fundamentally shaped by those characteristics. They make it their business to consult evolutionary biology and evolutionary social science in order to determine what those characteristics are, and they bring that information to bear on their understanding of the products of the human imagination.〔For general statements about the aims of scholars in this field, see (Brian Boyd, "Literature and Evolution: A Bio-Cultural Approach" ); (Interview with Joseph Carroll, "What Is Literary Darwinism?" ); (Jonathan Gottschall, "The Tree of Knowledge and Darwinian Literary Study" ); (Maya Lessov, A Filmed Interview with Joseph Carroll, Brian Boyd, and Jonathan Gottschall ); and (Marcus Nordlund, "Consilient Literary Interpretation" ).〕 Evolutionary literary criticism of a minimalist kind consists in identifying basic, common human needs—survival, sex, and status, for instance—and using those categories to describe the behavior of characters depicted in literary texts. Others pose for themselves a form of criticism involving an overarching interpretive challenge: to construct continuous explanatory sequences linking the highest level of causal evolutionary explanation to the most particular effects in individual works of literature. Within evolutionary biology, the highest level of causal explanation involves adaptation by means of natural selection. Starting from the premise that the human mind has evolved in an adaptive relation to its environment, literary Darwinists undertake to characterize the phenomenal qualities of a literary work (tone, style, theme, and formal organization), locate the work in a cultural context, explain that cultural context as a particular organization of the elements of human nature within a specific set of environmental conditions (including cultural traditions), identify an implied author and an implied reader, examine the responses of actual readers (for instance, other literary critics), describe the socio-cultural, political, and psychological functions the work fulfills, locate those functions in relation to the evolved needs of human nature, and link the work comparatively with other artistic works, using a taxonomy of themes, formal elements, affective elements, and functions derived from a comprehensive model of human nature.〔For an analysis of the topics and approaches in this field, see (Joseph Carroll, "Evolutionary Approaches to Literature and Drama" ). For examples of interpretive essays by evolutionary critics, see (Brian Boyd, "Art and Evolution: Spiegelman's ''The Narrative Corpse'' ); (Brian Boyd, "The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature" (on ''Lolita'') ); (Brian Boyd, "On the Origin of Comics: New York Double-Take" ); (Joseph Carroll, "Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in ''The Picture of Dorian Gray''" ); (Joseph Carroll, "The Cuckoo's History: Human Nature in ''Wuthering Heights'' ); (Joseph Carroll, "Human Nature and Literary Meaning: a Theoretical Model Illustrated with a Critique of ''Pride and Prejudice''" ); (Nancy Easterlin, "Hans Christian Andersen's Fish out of Water" ); (Nancy Easterlin, "Psychoanalysis and the 'Discipline' of Love'" (on Wordsworth) ); (Jonathan Gottschall, "Homer's Human Animal: Ritual Combat in the ''Iliad''" ); (Judith Saunders, "Evolutionary Biological Issues in Edith Wharton's ''The Children'' ); and (Judith Saunders, "Male Reproductive Strategies in Sherwood Anderson's 'The Untold Lie'" ).〕 Contributors to evolutionary studies in literature have included humanists, biologists, and social scientists. Some of the biologists and social scientists have adopted primarily discursive methods for discussing literary subjects, and some of the humanists have adopted the empirical, quantitative methods typical of research in the sciences. Literary scholars and scientists have also collaborated in research that combines the methods typical of work in the humanities with methods typical of work in the sciences.〔For examples of evolutionary criticism making use of empirical, quantitative methodology, see (Carroll, Gottschall, Johnson, and Kruger, "Agonistic Structure in Nineteenth-Century British Novels: Doing the Math" ); (Jonathan Gottschall, "Greater Emphasis on Female Attractiveness in ''Homo sapiens'': A Revised Solution to an Old Evolutionary Riddle" ); (Jonathan Gottschall, "A Modest Manifesto and Testing the Hypotheses of Feminist Fairy Tale Studies" ); (Jonathan Gottschall, "Response to Kathleen Ragan's 'What Happened to the Heroines in Folktales?'" ); (Jonathan Gottschall and Marcus Nordlund, "Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?" ); (Johnson, Carroll, Gottschall, and Kruger, "Hierarchy in the Library: Egalitarian Dynamics in Victorian Novels ); and (Stiller, Nettle, and Dunbar, "The Small World of Shakespeare's Plays" ). Essays by scientists using the discursive methods typical of work in the humanities are included in the collections of essays edited by (Boyd, Carroll, and Gottschall ); (Gottschall and Wilson ); (Headlam Wells and McFadden ); and (Martindale, Locher, and Petrov ).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Darwinian literary studies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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