Earticle

초록

영어

Evolutionary psychology is rooted in Darwin’s evolutionary biology. It attempts to explain human beings’ psychological traits in terms of Darwinian mechanisms that “lead back through unbroken casual sequences to the elementary biological drives toward survival and reproduction” (Carroll viii). Literary Darwinism grounded in evolutionary psychology brings literature within the category of cognitive and behavioral features susceptible to an adaptationist understanding and seeks innate patterns of human behavior system: survival, technology, parenting, mating, kin relation, social relation, and cognition. The methodology of literary Darwinism is, Joseph Carroll suggests, to connect the highest levels in the organization of human nature with the most detailed and subtle aspects of literary meaning. In other words, it is to connect the basic life history goals such as survival, growth, and reproduction with the finest nuances of theme, tone, and style in the organization of literary meaning in specific works (Carroll 189). This paper aims to read Toni Morrison’s first novel The Bluest Eye through evolutionary psychology and then to give an explanation of black characters’ maladaptation in terms of Darwinian literary criticism. The Bluest Eye is the novel through which a tension between the affirmation of the primary need to parent and mate and the recognition of cognitive behavioral system is at work. Human nature motivated as parenting and mating in The Bluest Eye is harshly distorted, which shows the way in which the false cognitive behavior system matters. Maladaptation of Pecola can be explained as a case that calls upon audience to recoil from maladaptive acts by invoking that this is not how humans behave. This kind of reading is an ultimate explanation of literature while sociopolitical and identity-based reading is a proximal one. At the risk of oversimplified reductionism, the former is expected to supplement the latter with a new and scientific interpretation of human behavior and motives in literature.

목차

I. 진화심리학과 문학적 다윈주의
 II. 인간 본성과 문학적 의미
 III. 진화 심리학으로 읽는 『가장 푸른 눈』
 IV. 부적응에 대한 옹호
 인용문헌
 Abstract

키워드

저자

• 김애주 [ Ae Ju Kim | 동국대 ]

참고문헌

발행기관

간행물

표지보기 관심저널 등록

• 간행물명

  미국소설 [마크 트웨인 리뷰]

• 간기

  연3회

• pISSN

  1738-5784

• 수록기간

  1991~2020

• 등재여부

  KCI 등재

• 십진분류

  KDC 843 DDC 813