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Joseph Carroll (scholar)

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Joseph Carroll(born 1949) is a scholar in the field ofliterature and evolution.He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley and is now Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at theUniversity of Missouri–St. Louis.

Publications and research[edit]

After monographs onMatthew Arnold(1982)[1]andWallace Stevens(1987),[2]Carroll's publications have centered on situating literary study within the evolutionary human sciences. HisEvolution and Literary Theory(1995)[3]was the first book in literary theory that assimilated ideas fromevolutionary psychology,evolutionary anthropology,sociobiology,human ethology,andevolutionary epistemology.He argued that evolutionary literary theory offered a viable alternative both topost-structuralismand to traditional humanism.

In the essays collected inLiterary Darwinism(2004),[4]Carroll worked toward building a comprehensive model ofhuman nature,gave examples of evolutionary literary criticism, and criticizedpost-structuralism,traditional humanism,ecocriticism,cognitive poetics,and a narrow form ofevolutionary psychology.

In the essays collected inReading Human Nature(2011),[5]Carroll examined the adaptive function of literature and the other arts, offered Darwinian interpretations ofThe Picture of Dorian Gray,Wuthering Heights,andHamlet,gave examples of quantitative literary analysis, and reflected on the course of intellectual history fromCharles Darwinto the present.

In the research described inGraphing Jane Austen(2012),[6]Carroll and colleagues conducted an Internet survey of reader responses to characters in British novels of the nineteenth century. The survey used categories from a model of human nature that included basic motives, emotions, personality characteristics, and criteria for selecting mates. The focus of the study was "agonistic structure," that is, the organization of characters intoprotagonists,antagonists,and minor characters. A later (2017) exercise in quantitative analysis examined attitudes toward evolution among scholars in many different academic disciplines.[7]

Carroll’s publications sinceReading Human Nature(2011) include essays that are mainly theoretical,[8][9]essays that are mainly exercises in interpretive literary criticism,[10][11]and essays that combine theoretical exposition with interpretive criticism.[12][13]

Carroll has handbook chapters in theOxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology,[14]theHandbook of Evolutionary Psychology,[15]A Companion to Literary Theory,[16]andLiterature and Other Knowledge.[17]He also has chapters in edited volumes on specific topics in the evolutionary human sciences:violence,[18][19]sociality,[20]death,[21]andemotion.[22]He produced an annotated edition of Darwin'sOn the Origin of Species[23]and has coedited four volumes of essays by divers hands.[24][25][26][27]He was editor-in-chief for the first 12 issues of the journalEvolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture.

Major works[edit]

  • The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold(1982).
  • Wallace Stevens’ Supreme Fiction: A New Romanticism(1987).
  • Evolution and Literary Theory(1995).
  • On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection,byCharles Darwin,edited by Joseph Carroll (2003).
  • Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature(2004).
  • Evolution, Literature and Film: A Reader(2010), edited by Joseph Carroll,Brian Boyd,andJonathan Gottschall.
  • Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice(2011).
  • Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning(2012), by Joseph Carroll,Jonathan Gottschall,John A. Johnson, and Daniel J. Kruger.
  • Darwin's Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences(2016), edited by Joseph Carroll,Dan P. McAdams,andEdward O. Wilson.
  • Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture(2020), edited by Joseph Carroll,Mathias Clasen,and Emelie Jonsson.
  • Imaginative Culture and Human Nature: Evolutionary Perspectives on the Arts, Religion, and Ideology(2022), edited by Joseph Carroll, John Johnson, Emelie Jonsson, Rex Jung, and Valerie van Mulukom.

References[edit]

  1. ^Carroll, Joseph. 1982.The Cultural Theory of Matthew Arnold.Berkeley. University of California Press.
  2. ^Carroll, Joseph. 1987.Wallace Stevens' Supreme Fiction: A New Romanticism.Baton Rouge. Louisiana State University Press.
  3. ^Carroll, Joseph. 1995.Evolution and Literary Theory.Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
  4. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2004.Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature.London: Routledge.
  5. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2011.Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice. Albany: SUNY Press.
  6. ^Carroll, Joseph, Jonathan Gottschall, John A.Johnson, and Daniel Kruger. 2012.Graphing Jane Austen: The Evolutionary Basis of Literary Meaning.New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  7. ^Carroll, Joseph, John A. Johnson, Catherine Salmon, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, Mathias Clasen, and Emelie Jonsson. 2017. "A Cross-Disciplinary Survey of Beliefs About Human Nature, Culture, and Science."Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture1 (1): 1-32. doi: 10.26613/esic/1.1.2.
  8. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2012. "The Truth About Fiction: Biological Reality and Imaginary Lives."Style46 (2): 129-60. doi.org/10.5325/style.46.2.0129.
  9. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2018. "Minds and Meaning in Fictional Narratives: An Evolutionary Perspective."Review of General Psychology22 (2): 135-46. doi: 10.1037/gpr0000104.
  10. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2012. "An Evolutionary Approach to Shakespeare'sKing Lear."InCritical Insights: The Family,edited by John Knapp, 83-103. Ipswitch, MA: EBSCO.
  11. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2013. "Correcting forThe Corrections:A Darwinian Critique of a Foucauldian Novel. "Style47 (1): 87-118. doi.org/10.5325/style.47.1.0087.
  12. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2012. "Meaning and Effect in Fiction: An Evolutionary Model of Interpretation Illustrated with a Reading of 'Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge'."Style26 (3): 297-316. doi.org/10.5325/style.46.3-4.0297.
  13. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2020. "Imagination, the Brain’s Default Mode Network, and Imaginative Verbal Artifacts." InEvolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture,edited by Joseph Carroll, Mathias Clasen and Emelie Jonsson, 31-52. Cham: Springer. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-46190-4_2.
  14. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2007. "Evolutionary Approaches to Literature and Drama," inOxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology,edited by R.I.M. Dunbar & L. Barrett, 637-48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  15. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2016. "Evolutionary Literary Study," inHandbook of Evolutionary Psychology,edited by David M. Buss, 2nd ed., 1103-19. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
  16. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2018. "Evolutionary Literary Theory," inA Companion to Literary Theory,edited by David Richter, 425-38. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell
  17. ^Carroll, Joseph. Forthcoming. “Evolutionary Biology and Literature,” inLiterature and Other Knowledge,edited by Ana Ribeiro and Sérgio Sousa.
  18. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2012. “The Extremes of Conflict in Literature: Violence, Homicide, and War,” inThe Oxford Handbook of Violence, Homicide, and War,edited by Todd Shackelford and Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford, 413-34. New York: Oxford University Press.
  19. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2013. “Violence in Literature: An Evolutionary Perspective,” inEvolution of Violence,edited by Todd K. Shackelford and Ranald D. Hansen, 33-52. New York: Springer.
  20. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2015. "Evolved Human Sociality and Literature” inHandbook on Evolution and Society: Toward an Evolutionary Social Science,edited by Jonathan H. Turner, Richard Machalek, and Alexandra Maryanski, 572-608. Boulder, CO: Paradigm
  21. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2019. “Death in Literature,” inEvolutionary Perspectives on Death,edited by Todd Shackelford and Virgil Ziegler, 137-59. New York: Springer.
  22. ^Carroll, Joseph. 2022. “Evolution: How Evolved Emotions Work in Literary Meaning,” inThe Routledge Companion to Emotion in Literature,edited by Patrick Colm Hogan, Bradley J. Irish, and Lalita Pandit Hogan, 85-97. New York: Routledge.
  23. ^Darwin, Charles. 2003.On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,edited by Joseph Carroll. Peterborough, Ontario. Broadview Press.
  24. ^Boyd, Brian, Joseph Carroll, and Jonathan Gottschall, editors. 2010.Evolution, Literature, and Film: A Reader.New York: Columbia University Press.
  25. ^Carroll, Joseph, Dan P. McAdams, and Edward O. Wilson, editors. 2016.Darwin’s Bridge: Uniting the Humanities and Sciences.New York: Oxford University Press.
  26. ^Carroll, Joseph, Mathias Clasen, and Emelie Jonsson, editors. 2020.Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture.Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
  27. ^Carroll, Joseph, John Johnson, Emelie Jonsson, Rex Jung, and Valerie van Mulukom, editors. 2022.Imaginative Culture and Human Nature: Evolutionary Perspectives on the Arts, Religion, and Ideology.Frontiers in Psychology. eBook.

External links[edit]

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