The contributors to this volume share the assumption that popular narrative, when viewed with an evolutionary lens, offers an incisive index into human nature. In theory, narrative art could take a near infinity of possible forms. In actual practice, however, particular motifs, plot patterns, stereotypical figures, and artistic devices persistently resurface, indicating specific predilections frequently at odds with our actual living conditions. Our studies explore various media and genres to gauge the impact of our evolutionary inheritance, in interdependence with the respective cultural environments, on our aesthetic appreciation. As they suggest, research into mass culture is not only indispensable for evolutionary criticism but may also contribute to our understanding of prehistoric selection pressures that still influence modern preferences in popular narrative.

Contributions by David Andrews, James Carney, Mathias Clasen, Brett Cooke, Tamas David-Barrett, Tom Dolack, Kathryn Duncan, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo, Joe Keener, Alex C. Parrish, Todd K. Platts, Anna Rotkirch, Judith P. Saunders, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Dirk Vanderbeke, and Sophia Wege.

About the Author
Dirk Vanderbeke is Professor of English Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. He has published on a variety of topics, e.g. physics and literature, evolutionary criticism, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, John Milton, and popular narratives including comics and graphic novels. Brett Cooke is Professor of Russian at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Pushkin and the Creative Process, and Human Nature in Utopia: Zamyatin's We, (co-) editor of Sociobiology and the Arts, The Fantastic Other, Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Art, and Critical Insights: War and Peace.

Reviews
"[...] this edited volume is an excellent addition to the study of popular culture, introducing a wider variety of narrative to the Darwinian approach. [...] It is encouraging to see such a broad range of narrative included, especially some of those often aimed at a young audience, such as graphic novels and Harry Potter. As someone who has dabbled in this area myself and advocated for the study of popular culture as artifacts of human nature, I highly recommend Evolution and Popular Narrative to anyone interested in the application of evolution to the arts or the study of popular culture in general."
-Catherine Salmon, in Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2020, pp. 141-143



Book Information
ISBN 9789004391154
Author Dirk Vanderbeke
Format Hardback
Page Count 312
Imprint Brill
Publisher Brill
Weight(grams) 620g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 155mm * 24mm