Genetics and the literary imagination /
This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a majo...
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| Language: | English |
| Edition: | First edition. |
| Series: | Oxford textual perspectives.
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| Summary: | This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major impact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book maps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying degrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and Jackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective. |
| Physical Description: | 202 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [177]-194) and index. |
| Published: |
Oxford ; New York :
Oxford University Press,
2020.
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| ISBN: | 9780198813286 0198813287 9780198813347 0198813341 |
3rd floor
| Call Number: |
PR830.S34 H36 2020 |
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| PR830.S34 H36 2020 | Available Place a Hold |