Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature (Frontiers of Narrative) - Hardcover

Austin, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0803230265 ISBN 13: 9780803230262

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2011

Synopsis

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our species' need for stories?

 

Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a "useful fiction," a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual accuracy. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examples--from the Bible to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and Don Quixote to No Exit--Austin's work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processes--and, perhaps, the very origins of literature. Named an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 by CHOICE Magazine. 

"My hope is that Austin's persuasive, approachable book will allow those reluctant to entertain the notion of universals and biology a chance to see that doing so does not mean engaging in that misnomer social Darwinism. Austin's book is a must read."--Kathryn Stasio, The Eighteenth Century: A Critical Bibliography

About this title

About the Author

Michael Austin is the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas. He is the author of Reading the World: Ideas That Matter and the editor of A Voice in the Wilderness: Conversations with Terry Tempest Williams.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803230265
• ISBN 13: 9780803230262
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192