Premium
Evolution in the English Department: The Biocultural Paradigms of Literary Darwinism and Adaptive Rhetoric
Author(s) -
Parrish Alex C.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12171
Subject(s) - rhetoric , scholarship , darwinism , rhetorical question , blame , mainstream , sociology , prestige , literature , literary criticism , epistemology , psychology , linguistics , social psychology , philosophy , art , political science , law
This article introduces emerging programs of study in the field of English (defined broadly) that operate under an evolutionary paradigm. Emerging from the “crisis of the humanities” that became known to a wider public audience in the late 20th‐century, literary Darwinism is examined as an alternative or addition to mainstream post‐structuralist theory, to which some attribute blame for the decline of literature's prestige. There are strong and weak forms of literary Darwinism in practice, ranging in approach from a complete paradigm shift to merely adding one more lens through which to read literature, film, and poetry in terms of both biology and culture. Rhetoric and composition scholarship is beginning to show interest in biocultural explanations for persuasive behavior as well. The nascent field of adaptive rhetoric combines the comparative study of human and nonhuman animal rhetorics with insight from evolutionary cognitive psychology, in order to gain further insight into the products of our evolved minds, such as rhetorical acts.