Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative »

Jonathan Gottschall has a Phd in English and teaches at St. Lawrence University.

David Sloan Wilson is professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University.

Literary critics and psychologists from North America, Oceania, and Britain debate whether evolutionary theory in any of its myriad forms can convincingly shed light on how literature changes. The chafing between naturalism and social constructivism is apparent in the essays. The topics include the psychological foundations of drama as revealed in Hamlet, evidence of special design in the reverse-engineering of narrative, and a modest manifesto and testing the hypotheses of feminist fairy tale studies. No index was agreed upon. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR