Introduction: Shrinking Possibility Space PART I: ON THEORY, METHOD, AND ATTITUDE On Theory On Method On Attitude PART II: CASE STUDIES AT THE NEXUS OF LITERATURE AND EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE The Heroine with a Thousand Faces Testing Feminist Fairy Tale Studies The Beauty Myth is No Myth Romantic Love: A Literary Universal Conclusion: FOTA Appendix A: Folktale Collections and Cultural Groupings for Chapters Four and Five Appendix B: Folktale Collections for Chapters Six and Seven

JOHNATHAN GOTTSCHALL is English Instructor, Washington and Jefferson College, USA.

Literary studies are at a tipping point. ." There is broad agreement that the discipline is in "crisis" - that it is aimless, that its intellectual energy is spent, that all of the trends are bad, and that fundamental change will be required to set things right. But there is little agreement on what those changes should be, and no one can predict which way things will ultimately tip.
Literature, Science, and a New Humanities represents a bold new response to the crisis in academic literary studies. This book presents a total challenge to dominant paradigms of literary analysis and offers a sweeping critique of those paradigms, and sketches outlines of a new paradigm inspired by scientific theories, methods, and attitudes.