Skip to main content
profile image
Faculty Selected Works of Joseph Carroll
Article
The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts
National Humanities Center Web Page (2012)
  • Joseph C. Carroll
  • Jonathan Gottschall, Washington & Jefferson College
  • John Johnson, Pennsylvania State University
  • Daniel J. Kruger, University of Michigan
Link
Abstract
Arguments on the adaptive function of literature and the other arts have occupied more of the shared attention of evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary literary scholars than any other topic. The amount of attention theorists have devoted to this issue signals that it is both crucially important and heavily disputed. By providing empirical evidence that bears on this issue, we hope to advance the argument in ways that can reduce the range of reasonable disputation. Before turning to our specific arguments on the adaptive function of agonistic structure in these particular novels, we summarize the current state of the discussion on this larger issue.
Disciplines
Publication Date
January, 2012
DOI
10.1057/9781137002419_6
Citation Information
Joseph C. Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall, John Johnson and Daniel J. Kruger. "The Adaptive Function of Literature and the Other Arts" National Humanities Center Web Page (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joseph-carroll/196/