A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation

Nancy Easterlin

ISBN 10: 1421404729 / ISBN 13: 9781421404721

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012

About this Item

A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation | Nancy Easterlin | Buch | Einband - fest (Hardcover) | Englisch | 2012 | Johns Hopkins University Press | EAN 9781421404721 | Verantwortliche Person für die EU: Libri GmbH, Europaallee 1, 36244 Bad Hersfeld, gpsr[at]libri[dot]de | Anbieter: preigu Print on Demand.

Seller Inventory # 123778749

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1421404729
• ISBN 13: 9781421404721
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 235W x 157H x 24D millimeters 235 millimeters width by 157 millimeters height by 24 millimeters depth
• Weight: 700 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Bücher

About this title

Synopsis

Combining cognitive and evolutionary research with traditional humanist methods, Nancy Easterlin demonstrates how a biocultural perspective in theory and criticism opens up new possibilities for literary interpretation.

Easterlin maintains that the practice of literary interpretation is still of central intellectual and social value. Taking an open yet judicious approach, she argues, however, that literary interpretation stands to gain dramatically from a fair-minded and creative application of cognitive and evolutionary research. This work does just that, expounding a biocultural method that charts a middle course between overly reductive approaches to literature and traditionalists who see the sciences as a threat to the humanities.

Easterlin develops her biocultural method by comparing it to four major subfields within literary studies: new historicism, ecocriticism, cognitive approaches, and evolutionary approaches. After a thorough review of each subfield, she reconsiders them in light of relevant research in cognitive and evolutionary psychology and provides a textual analysis of literary works from the romantic era to the present, including William Wordsworth’s "Simon Lee" and the Lucy poems, Mary Robinson’s "Old Barnard," Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s "Dejection: An Ode," D. H. Lawrence’s The Fox, Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, and Raymond Carver’s "I Could See the Smallest Things."

A Biocultural Approach to Literary Theory and Interpretation offers a fresh and reasoned approach to literary studies that at once preserves the central importance that interpretation plays in the humanities and embraces the exciting developments of the cognitive sciences.

About the Author

Nancy Easterlin is a University Research Professor and director of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Orleans and author of Wordsworth and the Question of “Romantic Religion.”