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This book examines selected works in the American literary tradition from an evolutionary perspective. Individual essays address figures ranging from Benjamin Franklin to Billy Collins, targeting a variety of fitness-related issues¿courtship, nepotism, competition, cooperation, status, and deception, for example¿in the context of both physical and social environment.
List of contents
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: The Story of a Successful Social Animal
2. Nepotism in Hawthorne¿s ¿My Kinsman, Major Molineux¿
3. Biophilia in Thoreaüs
Walden4. Bateman¿s Principle in ¿Song of Myself¿: Whitman Celebrates Male Ardency
5. Maladaptive Behavior and Auctorial Design: Huck Finn¿s Pap
6. Hell¿s Fury: Female Mate-Retention Strategies in Wharton¿s ¿Pomegranate Seed
and
Ethan Frome7. Male Reproductive Strategies in Sherwood Anderson¿s ¿The Untold Lie¿
8.
The Great Gatsby: An Unusual Case of Mate-Poaching
9. Female Sexual Strategies in the Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
10. Philosophy and Fitness: Hemingway¿s ¿A Clean, Well-Lighted Place¿ and
The Sun
Also Rises11. Paternal Confidence in Zora Neale Hurston¿s ¿The Gilded Six-Bits¿
12. The Role of the Arts in Male Courtship Display: Billy Collins¿s ¿Serenade¿
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Judith P. Saunders is Professor of English at Marist College in New York State. She is the author of
The Poetry of Charles Tomlinson: Border Lines and
Reading Edith Wharton through a Darwinian Lens: Evolutionary Biological Issues in Her Fiction.
Summary
Examines selected works in the American literary tradition from an evolutionary perspective. Using an interdisciplinary framework to pose new questions about long admired, much discussed texts, the collection as a whole provides an introduction to Darwinian literary critical methodology.
Additional text
“American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives is a
very interesting and discerning study, cogently argued, well-written, propelled
by Saunders’s knowledge of theory and research in evolutionary biology,
post-Darwin. She has made a noteworthy contribution to evolutionary criticism,
and, more, generally, to our understanding of American literary and cultural
history. American Classics also has important—and
controversial—implications for scholarship and teaching. … In American
Classics, Saunders sets out, with special skill and distinction, an array of
textual interpretations, close readings of American authors, a detailed series
of model case studies that are stimulating and persuasive. She convinces me
that her approach can make familiar literary texts feel new, reanimating them,
impelling us to peruse and ponder them in a new light. … I look forward to the
next stage of her research, and to the new directions in the field of
evolutionary literary criticism that she is expertly helping to chart and
explore.” —William E. Cain, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture,
Vol. 3, No. 1
