Comeuppance: Costly Signaling, Altruistic Punishment, and Other Biological Components of Fiction

by William Flesch

With Comeuppance , William Flesch delivers the freshest, most generous thinking about the novel since Walter Benjamin wrote on the storyteller and Wayne C. Booth on the rhetoric of fiction. In clear and engaging prose, Flesch integrates evolutionary psychology into literary studies, creating a new theory of fiction in which form and content flawlessly intermesh. Fiction, Flesch contends, gives us our most powerful way of making sense of the social world. Comeuppance begins with an exploration of the appeal of gossip and ends with an account of how we can think about characters and care about them as much as about persons we know to be real. We praise a storyteller who contrives a happy or at least an appropriate ending, and fault the writer who refuses us one. Flesch uses Darwinian theory to show how fiction satisfies our desire to see the good vindicated and the wicked get their comeuppance. He conveys the danger and excitement of reading fiction with nimble intelligence and provides wide reference to stories both familiar and little known. Flesch has given us a book that is sure to claim a central place in the discussion of literature and the humanities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychology

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

William Flesch is Professor of English at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA).

http://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/...

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every writer and lit critic should read this book.

[Jason ("jcreed") · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readable and insightful analysis of the function of reciprocation, altruism, signaling, rational and irrational behavior in life and in narratives. I expect you might get even more out of it than me if you have read more literature.

[D P · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most important books of nonfiction