Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
Bestseller
BestsellerE-book
Author Austin, Michael, 1966-

Title Useful fictions : evolution, anxiety, and the origins of literature / Michael Austin.

Publication Info. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2010]
©2010

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xvii, 171 pages) : illustrations.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Frontiers of narrative
Frontiers of narrative.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Scheherazade's stories and Pangloss's nose -- Stories for thinking -- The influence of anxiety -- Information anxiety -- The problem of other people -- Sex, lies, and phenotypes -- Deceiving ourselves and others.
Summary "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion observed in The White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, in Useful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our species' need for stories?
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Fiction -- History and criticism -- Theory, etc.
Fiction.
Fiction -- Psychological aspects.
Fiction -- Psychological aspects.
Fiction -- Appreciation.
Fiction -- Appreciation.
Evolution in literature.
Evolution in literature.
Literature -- Philosophy.
Literature -- Philosophy.
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Other Form: Print version: Austin, Michael, 1966- Useful fictions. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©2010 (DLC) 2010001424
ISBN 0803232977 (electronic book)
9780803232976 (electronic book)
1283050811
9781283050814
9780803230262 (cloth ; alkaline paper)
0803230265 (cloth ; alkaline paper)