Introduction Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, and Jonathan Gottshcall Part I. Evolution and Human Nature Historical Overview 1. Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (2008) David M. Buss The Theory of Evolution 2. Recapitulation and Conclusion, from On the Origin of Species (1859) Charles Darwin 3. The Digital River (1995) Richard Dawkins Humankind 4. General Summary and Conclusion, from The Descent of Man (1871) Charles Darwin 5. Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology (1975) Edward O. Wilson 6. The Universal People (1991) Donald E. Brown 7. Sociobiology at Century's End (2000) Edward O. Wilson 8. Evolution and Explanation (2005) Steven Pinker 9. Evolutionary Social Constructivism (2005) David Sloan Wilson Part II. The Riddle of Art 10. Art and Adaptation (1997) Steven Pinker 11. The Arts and Their Interpretation (1998) Edward O. Wilson 12. Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000) Ellen Dissanayake 13. Arts of Seduction (2000) Geoffrey Miller 14. Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds? Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Aesthetics, by Fiction John Tooby and Leda Cosmides 15. The Uses of Fiction (2009) Denis Dutton Part III. Literature by Film 16. Getting It All Wrong: Bioculture Critiques Cultural Critique (2006) Brian Boyd 17. Imagining Human Nature Joseph Carroll, by Jonathan Gottschall 18. Two Worlds: The Ghost and the Machine (2008) Edward Slingerland 19. Consilient Literary Interpretation (2002) Marcus Nordlund 20. Humanism and Human Nature in the Renaissance (2005) Robin Headlam Wells 21. The Reality of Illusion (1996) Joseph Anderson 22. Darwin and the Directors: Film, by Emotion Murray Smith 23. What Snakes, by Eagles David Bordwell Part IV. Interpretations 24. Homeric Women: Re-imagining the Fitness Landscape (2008) Jonathan Gottschall 25. New Science, by Old Myth: An Evolutionary Critique of the Oedipal Paradigm (2001) Michelle Scalise Sugiyama 26. The Wheel of Fire and the Mating Game: Explaining the Origins of Tragedy and Comedy (2005) Daniel Nettle 27. Jealousy in Othello (2007) Marcus Nordlund 28. Wordsworth, by Psychoanalysis Nancy Easterlin 29. Vindication and Vindictiveness: Oliver Twist (2007) William Flesch 30. The Cuckoo's History: Human Nature in Wuthering Heights (2008) Joseph Carroll 31. Human Nature, by Utopia Brett Cooke 32. Paternal Confidence in Zora Neale Hurston's "The Gilded Six-Bits" Judith P. Saunders 33. Character in Citizen Kane (1996) Joseph Anderson 34. Convention, by Construction David Bordwell 35. Art and Evolution: The Avant-Garde as Test Case: Spiegelman in The Narrative Corpse (2008) Brian Boyd Part V. Literature as Laboratory 36. Literature, by Science Jonathan Gottschall 37. Slash Fiction and Human Mating Psychology (2004) Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons 38. Cultural Variation Is Part of Human Nature: Literary Universals, by Context-Sensitivity Michelle Scalise Sugiyama 39. Paleolithic Politics in British Novels of the Longer Nineteenth Century Joseph Carroll, by Jonathan Gottschall Bibliography Contributors Index

Original and unique--there is almost by default no collection like it at present. The field of evolutionary literary studies is coalescing as I write, and the publication of this book will have a decisive and positive impact in this regard. -- Peter Swirski, author of Literature, Analytically Speaking: Explorations in the Theory of Interpretation, Analytic Aesthetics, and Evolution Extremely well conceived, bringing together classics from the early days and the cutting edge of recent statistical scholarship. The essays are excellent and represent the best work being done right now in the field. -- Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University This book not only fills a need, but creates a field. With texts ranging from the classic to the contemporary, Evolution, Literature, and Film builds on the dramatic advances made in recent years by evolutionary literary study and extends those advances to the study of film and beyond, to a 'new humanities.' This argument is frankly revolutionary in its aspirations, seeking to revitalize the humanities by linking them to the human sciences. This move, the editors argue, will ground the humanities in a world of fact, account for the pertinence to literary and cinematic art of universal principles of human being, and dignify the study of creative expression by placing it in the context of evolved human existence. -- Geoffrey Harpham, president and director, National Humanities Center