Search for Books
Start your search for books on a particular topic using the KU Libraries Catalog. You may also use Quick Search, available on the main library homepage, to search for both books and articles related to your topic. If you need to request an item not owned by KU, check to see whether it is available for InterLibrary Borrowing.
- KU Libraries CatalogUse the KU Libraries Catalog to search for books on your topic. Search results will include print and electronic books owned by the KU Libraries, as well as other materials accessible through the libraries in print or online including journals, newspapers, and more. Note: The regular KU Library Catalog search WILL NOT search at the article level in journals. Instead, it will give you the titles of journals we own.
- WorldCat This link opens in a new windowWorldCat includes millions of records of items held by libraries in the U.S. and internationally, and can be useful in identifying books not held in the KU collection. Once identified, you can order material through InterLibrary Borrowing.
Identifying Books by Subject
As you conduct your research using the KU Libraries Catalog and the QuickSearch bar on the library home page, use the Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings for items that look useful in order to find other titles on similar topics.
The following are a few examples of LC Subject headings relevant to your class:
Titles from Dr. Neill's Recommended Bibliography
Books of Interest
These items are just a few of the many titles we have related to the authors, works, and theories you have been discussing in class:
Evolutionary Aesthetics of Human Ethics in Hardy's Tragic Narratives by
"Treatment of Hardy’s tragic narratives under the objective lens of evolutionary literary theory has led to three basic findings: First, within the scope of the analysis of the five major tragic narratives, representation of Hardy’s evolutionary aesthetics of human ethics, in terms of altruistic sympathy and compassion, shows that adapted parental investment in children indicates the reason why women submit to pain and suffering more than the men do. The costly investment of women in maternal behaviour leads to submission in many cases, but in return they gain better fitness for survival and reproduction than men. This is implicitly highlighted as a force of superiority in the tragedies studied, as the male characters often invest in heroic deeds over their children. Second, that which has for many years been identified as pessimism in Hardy’s tragic narratives is in fact a surface cognitive layer, under which is an implicit teaching of evolutionary aesthetics of human ethics, which guides to a true fitness of human life. Third, sympathy and particularly compassion are not only human emotions but also adapted cognitive virtues that centre on ethical teaching" (from publisher description).
Call Number: Ebook or PrintISBN: 1443828971Publication Date: 2011-05-01
The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Cultures by
"Daniel Dennett famously claimed for Darwinian theory the status of universal solvent: the totalising theory of theories, even of theories of literature. Yet only a few writers and critics have followed his view. This volume asks why. It examines both evolution in literature, and the evolution of literature. It looks at literary representations of Darwinism both historically and synchronically, at how a theory of literature might be derived from evolutionary theory, and indeed how evolution as a process might be regarded as itself aesthetic. It complements these theoretical and historical dimensions of enquiry with the comparative dimension" (from publisher description).
Call Number: EbookISBN: 9789042033979Publication Date: 2011
Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature by Call Number: Ebook or PrintISBN: 041597013XPublication Date: 2004
The Literary Imagination from Erasmus Darwin to H. G. Wells by
"At the close of the eighteenth century, Erasmus Darwin declared that he would 'enlist the imagination under the banner of science,' beginning, Michael Page argues, a literary narrative on questions of evolution, ecology, and technological progress that would extend from the Romantic through the Victorian periods. Examining the interchange between emerging scientific ideas-specifically evolution and ecology-new technologies, and literature in nineteenth-century Britain, Page shows how British writers from Darwin to H.G. Wells confronted the burgeoning expansion of scientific knowledge that was radically redefining human understanding and experience of the natural world, of human species, and of the self" (from publisher description).
Call Number: PR468.S34 P34 2012, Watson 4 WestISBN: 9781409438694Publication Date: 2012
Literature after Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859-1939 by
"What makes us human? Where is the limit between human and animal? These are questions that haunt post-Darwinian literature. Covering fiction from Kipling to Kafka, this study offers a historically embedded analysis of anthropological anxiety in the period between the publication of the Origin of Species and the beginning of the Second World War" (publisher description).
Call Number: PR878.E95 R53 2011, Watson 4 WestISBN: 9780230273405Publication Date: 2011
Moral Authority, Men of Science, and the Victorian Novel by
"Nineteenth-century men of science aligned scientific practice with moral excellence as part of an endeavor to secure cultural authority for their discipline. Anne DeWitt examines how novelists from Elizabeth Gaskell to H. G. Wells responded to this alignment. Revising the widespread assumption that Victorian science and literature were part of one culture, she argues that the professionalization of science prompted novelists to deny that science offered widely accessible moral benefits. Instead, they represented the narrow aspirations of the professional as morally detrimental while they asserted that moral concerns were the novel's own domain of professional expertise. This book draws on works of natural theology, popular lectures, and debates from the pages of periodicals to delineate changes in the status of science and to show how both familiar and neglected works of Victorian fiction sought to redefine the relationship between science and the novel" (publisher's description).
Call Number: PR868.S34 D4 2013, Watson 4 WestISBN: 9781107036178Publication Date: 2013
Children's Literature: New Approaches by Call Number: PR990 .C496 2004, Watson 4 WestISBN: 140391737XPublication Date: 2004Includes essay: "Children's Literature, Science and Faith: The Water-Babies"
Primitive Minds: Evolution and Spiritual Experience in the Victorian Novel by
"For twenty-first-century veterans of the evolution culture wars, Primitive Minds: Evolution and Spiritual Experience in the Victorian Novel, by Anna Neill, makes unlikely bedfellows of two Victorian “discoveries”: evolutionary theory and spiritualism. Victorian science did much to uncover the physical substratum of mystical or dreamy experience, tracing spiritual states to a lower, reflex, or more evolutionarily primitive stage of consciousness. Yet science’s pursuit of knowledge beyond sense-based evidence uncannily evoked powers associated with this primitive mind: the capacity to link events across space and time, to anticipate the future, to uncover elements of the forgotten past, and to see into the minds of others" (from publisher description).
Call Number: Ebook or PrintISBN: 0814212255Publication Date: 2013
Robert Louis Stevenson, Science, and the Fin de Siècle by
"Reid examines Robert Louis Stevenson's writings in the context of late-Victorian evolutionist thought, arguing that an interest in 'primitive' life is at the heart of his work. She investigates a wide range of Stevenson's writing, including Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Treasure Island as well as previously unpublished material from the Stevenson archive at Yale. Reid's interpretation offers a new way of understanding the relationship between his Scottish and South Seas work. Her analysis of Stevenson's engagement with anthropological and psychological debate also illuminates the dynamic intersections between literature and science at the fin de siècle" (from publisher's description).
Call Number: PR5496 .R45 2006ISBN: 1403936633Publication Date: 2006
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