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Article: Reflections on literary Darwinism.(Responses)
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- June 22, 2008
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Joseph Carroll has done an excellent job outlining some of the accomplishments of this fresh approach to literature. Unsurprisingly, I approve of the endeavor, being a PhD in evolutionary psychology who started out majoring in biology with a minor in comparative literature. Back in the day, I loved those literature classes. Or at least, I loved the reading of Homer and Virgil, and later on the works of Shakespeare, Dostoyevsty, and Baudelaire. But I never quite understood the point of the types of analyses that the professors wanted. It wasn't that they were difficult to do (and the psychoanalytic ones were certainly fun) but I saw them as an intellectual exercise, not as ...