Forging the Missing Link: Interdisciplinary Stories

by Gillian Beer

Are there particular kinds of cultural stories that interdisciplinary work uncovers, stories that would otherwise lie latent or concealed? Gillian Beer argues that there are and that the 'missing link' (the notion of an unexplained gap in evolution between humans and their precursors) produces such a narrative. Both Darwin and Huxley denied that any link was missing in the evolutionary process. Yet the idea took hold in journalism, fiction, poetry, cartoons, and popular entertainment – and has continued to fascinate in our century. Professor Beer suggests that it was no accident that the search for the missing link and the rise of the detective story occurred in the same period. What anxieties did the missing link conceal? The author provides some unexpected answers.

49 pages, Paperback

First published February 26, 1993

About the author

Dame Gillian Beer is a British literary critic and academic, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She was a King Edward VII Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Cambridge as wells as a past President of Clare Hall College. She also spent time as the Andrew Mellon Senior Scholar at the Yale Center for British Art.