Darwinian Literary Studies - Critical Commentaries

Critical Commentaries

Some of the commentaries included in the special double issue of Style are critical of literary Darwinism. Other critical commentaries include those of William Benzon, "Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism," (Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Fall 2005/Winter 2006); William Deresiewicz, “Adaptation: On Literary Darwinism,” The Nation June 8, 2009: 26-31; William Flesch, Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction, (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2008); Eugene Goodheart, Darwinian Misadventures in the Humanities, (New Brunswick: NJ: Transaction, 2007); Jonathan Kramnick, "Against Literary Darwinism," in Critical Inquiry, Winter 2011; "Debating Literary Darwinism," a set of responses to Jonathan Kramnick's essay, along with Kramnick's rejoinder, in Critical Inquiry, Winter 2012; and Alan Richardson, “Studies in Literature and Cognition: A Field Map,” in The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity, ed. Alan Richardson and Ellen Spolsky (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004 1-29). Goodheart and Deresiewicz, adopting a traditional humanist perspective, reject efforts to ground literary study in biology. Richardson disavows the Darwinists' tendency to attack poststructuralism. Richardson and Benzon both align themselves with cognitive science and distinguish that alignment from an alignment with evolutionary psychology. Flesch makes use of evolutionary research on game theory, costly signaling, and altruistic punishment but, like Stephen Jay Gould, professes himself hostile to evolutionary psychology. For a commentary that is sympathetic to evolutionary psychology but skeptical about the possibilities of using it for literary study, see Steven Pinker, "Toward a Consilient Study of Literature," a review of The Literary Animal, Philosophy and Literature 31 (2007): 162-178.