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On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction
Open accessAbstract
First comprehensive explanation of art and fiction from first principles. Published by Harvard's prestige sub-imprint. Proposes an evolutionary and cognitive explanation for art, especially fiction; draws on anthropology, art history, biology, economics, history, literary studies, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, religion and sociology; applies the theory to two examples, Homer's "Odyssey" (early in recorded story) and Dr Seuss's "Horton Hears a Who!" (early in children's exposure to story); offers an account of the emergence of purpose in evolution, especially in culture, religion, art and science.
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Citations
Cited by
Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen
Wiessner, P. W. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1404212111 · Cited by 485
Storytelling as Adaptive Collective Sensemaking
Bietti, L. M., Tilston, O., & Bangerter, A. (2019) · Topics in Cognitive Science · doi:10.1111/tops.12358 · Cited by 205
Mar, R. A. (2018) · Discourse Processes · doi:10.1080/0163853x.2018.1448209 · Cited by 108
Changed by Literature? A Critical Review of Psychological Research on the Effects of Reading Fiction
Caracciolo, M., & Van Duuren, T. (2015) · Interdisciplinary Literary Studies · doi:10.5325/intelitestud.17.4.0517 · Cited by 48
Reading about minds: The social-cognitive potential of narratives
Eekhof, L. S., van Krieken, K., & Willems, R. M. (2022) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-022-02079-z · Cited by 39
Metadata
- Authors
- Boyd, B.
- Venue
- Harvard University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Published
- 2010-11-15
- OpenAlex
- W4239552653
- Cited by
- 483
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 45.60
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
