American Classics

Judith P. Saunders is Professor of English at Marist College in New York State. She is the author of The Poetry of Charles Tomlinson: Border Lines and Reading Edith Wharton through a Darwinian Lens: Evolutionary Biological Issues in Her Fiction.

“Judith Saunders’s book shows just how good evolutionary literary criticism can be. She convincingly demonstrates that an evolutionary critic can generate new insights about literary works to which many generations of scholars have already devoted critical attention. Moreover, she unites a fine literary sensibility with special gifts for writing forceful and evocative prose. Her book belongs to that very small set of interpretive critical works that give specifically literary pleasure in their own right.”— Joseph Carroll, Curators' Professor of English, University of Missouri—St. Louis, editor in chief of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture

• Introduction1.The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin: The Story of a Successful Social Animal2 Nepotism in Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”3 Biophilia in Thoreau’sWalden4 Bateman’s Principle in “Song of Myself”: Whitman Celebrates Male Ardency5 Maladaptive Behavior and Auctorial Design: Huck Finn’s Pap6 Hell’s Fury: Female Mate-Retention Strategies in Wharton’s “Pomegranate SeedandEthan Frome7 Male Reproductive Strategies in Sherwood Anderson’s “The Untold Lie”8.The Great Gatsby: An Unusual Case of Mate-Poaching9 Female Sexual Strategies in the Poetry of Edna StVincent Millay10 Philosophy and Fitness: Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” and The Sun Also Rises11 Paternal Confidence in Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits”12 The Role of the Arts in Male Courtship Display: Billy Collins’s “Serenade”GlossaryBibliographyIndex