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. |
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... rhetoric vague enough to contain such distinct and contrasting meanings , Bar- rish can work toward reversing Darwin's meaning . He is not able to complete the reversal , but by piling up equivocal associations , he uses Darwin's own ...
... rhetoric " as a form of activity detached from external reference and regulated wholly by its own internal logic . Modern proponents of rhetoric - Stanley Fish , for example — operate under identical presuppositions , and in consequence ...
... rhetoric to one of the finest rhetorical passages in his own work , the conclusion to the Descent . The logic of Darwin's conclusion is basically the same as that of Huxley's essay . To summarize : people will be upset to hear that they ...