A modest proposal for a reorientation in literary studies

This essay offers a review of Literature, Science and a New Humanities by Jonathan Gottschall. The author challenges the field of literary studies to rethink long-held assumptions about the nature of knowledge and human nature. In particular, what appear to be dominant tendencies in the field have strongly resisted the inclusion of findings from biology and genetics specifically. This resistance is tied to a view that scientific methods do not apply to the study of literature, and that radical social-constructivist theory presents a general alternative to the traditional methods of scientific inquiry. A proposal is made to incorporate recent advances in the cognitive sciences into the analysis of literature. Specifically, concepts drawn from evolutionary psychology might be especially useful in the analysis of narrative themes.