Darwinian Dialogues
Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Andrew Watts
Click cover to enlarge Booksellers & libraries: | Transcript 32 Legenda
ISBN: 978-1-839541-96-4 (hardback) • RRP £95, $120, €120 ISBN: 978-1-839541-97-1 (paperback, forthcoming) ISBN: 978-1-839541-98-8 (JSTOR ebook) EnglishFrenchFictionTranslation Artistic adaptations can readily be compared to genes. In art as in biology, adaptations evolve from a source material, undergoing replication and mutation as they attempt to improve their fitness for survival. Yet biological adaptation is much more than a convenient metaphor for the study of its cultural counterpart. Mobilising evolutionary thought – from the Darwinian concept of natural selection to more recent theories of human emotion – enables us to reshape our understanding of the forces, tensions, and contradictions that underpin the production and reception of adapted works. Focusing on adaptations of novels by key nineteenth-century writers including Austen, Balzac, and Twain, Darwinian Dialogues is a bold reassessment of the way in which adaptation operates as a creative practice, and how it, too, has evolved over time. Andrew Watts is Reader in French Studies at the University of Birmingham.
Bibliography entry: Watts, Andrew, Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda, 2025) First footnote reference: 35 Andrew Watts, Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda, 2025), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Watts, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Watts, Andrew. 2025. Darwinian Dialogues: Adaptation, Evolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel, Transcript, 32 (Legenda) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Watts 2025: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Watts 2025: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Darwinian-Dialogues www.mhra.org.uk/publications/t-32 |