{"product_id":"genetics-and-the-literary-imagination-clare-hanson-9780198813347","title":"Genetics and the Literary Imagination","description":"Oxford Textual Perspectives is a series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures, and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental\u003cbr\u003eworks and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question\u003cbr\u003efamiliar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major\u003cbr\u003eimpact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book\u003cbr\u003emaps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying\u003cbr\u003edegrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and\u003cbr\u003eJackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective. As advances in postgenomics, especially epigenetics, provoke increasing public interest and concern, this book offers a timely analysis of debates that have fundamentally altered our understanding of\u003cbr\u003ewhat it means to be human.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Clare Hanson\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0198813341\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198813347\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press (UK)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/07\/2020\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 212\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.65lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.90h x 5.30w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 08\/01\/2021","brand":"Clare Hanson","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47202105327871,"sku":"9780198813347","price":34.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_0e242147-dc71-47f1-aac6-8a85d0a2e546.jpg?v=1756819657","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/genetics-and-the-literary-imagination-clare-hanson-9780198813347","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}