Evolution and Literary TheoryCarroll anatomizes the irrationalism of current literary theory with surgical precision. In a concise, lucid prose, he lays bare the sophistries at the heart of the doctrines propounded by Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Greenblatt, Eagleton, J. Hillis Miller, Fish, and many others. In opposition to the textualism and indeterminacy that constitute the central doctrines of poststructuralism, Carroll affiliates himself with a realist and naturalist tradition of thought that runs from Darwin and Huxley, through Leslie Stephen and Thorstein Veblen, to Konrad Lorenz and Karl Popper. He offers a comprehensive synthesis of current evolutionary theory in the human sciences, and he shows why the evolutionary paradigm provides the only adequate source for a modern theory of culture. |
From inside the book
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... Eliot's personal identity . Mirah is represented as a childlike figure . Within the structure of psychosexual sym- bolism , she seems to represent Eliot's child identity . When Eliot repudiated Christianity early in her adult life , she ...
... Eliot's biological naturalism does not come quite naturally . The struggle between the naturalistic and the transcendental visions of the world is itself a crucial feature of her thematic structures . As James also observes , Eliot ...
... Eliot and Arnold constitutes a chronicle of growing admiration that culminates in definitive pronouncements of their classical canonical value . In his reviews of Eliot's works up through Felix Holt , James was appreciative but reserved ...