Evolution and eugenics in American literature and culture, 1880-1940: essays on ideological conflict and complicity

Abstract

Charles Darwin's theory of descent shook the foundations of Western thought and bibllical authority and suggested that, like our animal progenitors, man is trapped by biological determinism and environment, which requires the fittest specimens to struggle and adapt without benefit of God in order to survive. The related principles of eugenics, which promoted progress through social engineering, also has profound implications and consequences. In this contect, this volume focusses on how American literature- in representing, challenging, and critiquing culture- appropriated and aesthetically transformed these theories and, reciprocally, how literature was altered by these ideas. In exploring the extent and depth of these theories on genres and individual authors, the editors have included individual essays from different theoretical positions on canonical and non-canonical, black and white, female and male authors, (on race, class, and gender issues), and on literature with different geographical settings and publlication venues- essays that examine an American literary landscape inseparable from social attitudes and ideologies.