Rethinking the human in the Darwinian novel: Zola, Hardy, and utopian fiction

Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution began a revolution in thought, displacing the human from the centre of the natural order and consigning it to the same ‘struggle for life’ as its animal ancestors. This profoundly discomforting truth created shock waves in literature and culture which reverberate still. Sreenan revisits the legacy of Darwin’s thought in works by Thomas Hardy and Émile Zola, and in utopian fictions by Samuel Butler, Aldous Huxley, and the more contemporary Michel Houellebecq. Tracing how narrative fiction has responded to humanity’s traumatic dethronement, the book explores themes of hereditary fate, violence, sexual compe­tition, and utopian desire. Drawing on an array of theoretical resources — from Deleuzian biophilosophy to psychoanalysis — Sreenan reveals how both literary realism and utopianism stage a tension between Darwinian pessimism and an affirm­ation of human existence.