Thre's a ton of stuff on the "uses" of fiction. The May 20 issue of THE NATION has a piece, "Adaptation: on Literary Darwinism". The Autumn 2009 issue of the Wilson Quarterly has a piece based on the "NATION" piece, title "Cheeks Swabs for Hamlet".
Joseph Carroll allegedly launched the topic of literary Darwinism with his 1995 book, "Evolution and Literary Theory". Brian Boyd's 2009 book, "On the Origin of Stories" is the latest contribution. I can't pretend I've seriously studied the material, but what I have read is unpersuasive. I often feel the great majority of literary theory is the product of desperation in scholars who are pressured more and more to publish -- but literature is a "closed" subject. By that I mean, the material they can write about is all behind us, as distinguished from, say, science which can in the act of research and writing produce new subject matter.
