After Darwin : literature, theory, and criticism in the twenty-first century / edited by Devin Griffiths, Deana Kreisel.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Griffiths, Devin, 1978- editor.

Kreisel, Deanna K., editor.

Series:

Todd, Anna. After series.

After series

After series (Cambridge University Press)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882--Influence.

Darwin, Charles.

Literature and science.

Literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Literature.

Aesthetics.

Science and the humanities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 264 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Summary:

Creative storytelling is the beating heart of Darwin's science. All of Darwin's writings drew on information gleaned from a worldwide network of scientific research and correspondence, but they hinge on moments in which Darwin asks his reader to imagine how specific patterns came to be over time, spinning yarns filled with protagonists and antagonists, crises, triumphs, and tragedies. His fictions also forged striking new possibilities for the interpretation of human societies and their relation to natural environments. This volume gathers an international roster of scholars to ask what Darwin's writing offers future of literary scholarship and critical theory, as well as allied fields like history, art history, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, the history of race, aesthetics, and ethics. It speaks to anyone interested in the impact of Darwin on the humanities, including literary scholars, undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers interested in Darwin's continuing influence.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Contents

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Chapter 1 Introduction: After Darwin: Ecology, Posthumanism, and Aesthetics in the Twenty-First Century

1.1 Humanism and Literary Studies

1.2 Darwin as Philosopher

1.3 Darwin's Difference

1.4 Darwin's Aesthetics

1.5 Conclusion

Notes

Part I Environments after Darwin

Chapter 2 Darwin after Nature: Evolution in an Age of Extinction

Chapter 3 Darwin and Animal Studies

3.1 Animal Advocacy Movements

3.2 Ethology

3.3 Companion Species

3.4 Species of Concern

Chapter 4 Darwin's Birdsong: Sound Studies and Darwinian Aesthetics

4.1 Auditory Ekphrasis and Animal Phonetics

4.2 Birdsong and the Gradations of Language

4.3 Aesthetics and Approaches to Darwin

Chapter 5 Darwin and the Anthropocene

Part II Differences after Darwin

Chapter 6 Disability after Darwin

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Beyond the Ableism of Darwin's Evolutionary Theory

6.3 Darwin's Interdependencies

Chapter 7 Race after Darwin

7.1 Critical Race Theory and Critiques of Science, Race, and the State

7.2 Homelands, Diasporas, and Being

7.3 Race and Technology

7.4 Conclusion

Note

Chapter 8 Darwin under Domestication

Chapter 9 Feminism at War: Sexual Selection, Darwinism, and Fin-de-Siècle Fiction

9.1 Sexual Selection and Feminist Responses

9.2 Darwinism, Eugenics, and the New Woman

9.3 Darwinism, French Fiction, and Womanly Power

9.4 Conclusion

Chapter 10 The Survival of the Unfit

Part III Humanism after Darwin

Chapter 11 Darwin's Human History

11.1 An Exceptional Animal

11.2 A Moral Being

11.3 The Great Leap Forward

11.4 An Empire of Sympathy

11.5 The Exterminating Angel

Notes.

Chapter 12 Conscience after Darwin

12.1 Introduction: Conscience Before Darwin

12.2 Darwin on Human Conscience

12.3 Evolutionary Ethics after Darwin: Problems and Potentialities

12.3.1 The Naturalistic Fallacy

12.3.2 Must Naturally Evolved Conscience Be Disenfranchised?

12.3.3 The Rational Authority of Conscience

12.3.4 Antisocial Conscience

12.3.5 Gene Selectionism

12.4 Conclusion: Gradualism vs. Saltationism, Darwin and the Will

Chapter 13 Darwin, the Sublime, and the Chronology of Looking

13.1 The Beagle Diary and the Chronology of Looking

13.2 Variety and Variation

13.3 The Distributed Agency of Selection

Chapter 14 Instinctive Moral Actions: Darwin and the Ethics of Biology

14.1 Historical Contexts

14.2 Darwin and Mill on Biologism

14.3 Darwin and the Biology of Sex

14.4 Darwin and Mill on the Relational Self

Acknowledgment

Chapter 15 Darwinian Analogies in Thinking about Art and Culture

Afterword

References

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Dec 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781009184885

1009184881

9781009184892

100918489X

9781009181167

1009181165