Can I read Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature (Frontiers of Narrative) on EtoBox?

Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature (Frontiers of Narrative) by Michael Austin is a science book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature (Frontiers of Narrative) about?

"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? Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a "useful fiction," a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual accuracy. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examples--from the Bible to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights and

Who reads Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature (Frontiers of Narrative)?

Author

Michael Austin

Publisher

University of Nebraska Press ; Combined Academic [distributor

Published

2011

Language

EN

ISBN

9780803230262

Category

science

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Fiction, Philosophy

Rating

4.15 / 5 (20 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14