José Angel García Landa
University of Zaragoza, Department of English and German Philology, Faculty member (retired 2022 - but alive and clickin' in the Afterlife).
José Ángel GARCíA LANDA (MA Brown University, PhD Zaragoza, 1988) has been a Senior lecturer in English at the University of Zaragoza, Spain (1992-2022). He specialises in literary theory and narratology. He is the author of 'Samuel Beckett y la narración reflexiva' (Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 1992) and of 'Acción, Relato, Discurso: Estructura de la ficción narrativa (Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1998). He has coedited essay collections such as 'Narratology' (Longman Critical Reader, 1996), 'Gender, I-deology: Essays on Theory, Fiction and Film' (Rodopi, 1996), and 'Theorizing Narrativity'(Walter de Gruyter, 2008). He was the editor (1992-1999) of the academic journal of English and American Studies 'Miscelánea', and has written papers for 'Atlantis', 'Papers on Language and Literature', 'English Language Notes', 'European Journal of English Studies' and other philological journals, as well as contributions to a number of books. He is currently working on 'A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism and Philology', a free-access Internet resource included in the Oxford Text Archive. He has been teaching courses in English studies (Commentary of Literary Texts, English and American criticism, English and American literature, Shakespeare, drama...) up to 2022, and formerly in the postgraduate program, usually on literature, critical theory or narratology. He runs a number of blogs on these and other subjects, and is a sworn enemy of face masks and face maskers.
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Zaragoza
50009 Zaragoza
Spain
Address: Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Zaragoza
50009 Zaragoza
Spain
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Drafts by José Angel García Landa
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English abstract: EVOLUTION, ANACYCLOSIS, AND THE SOCIAL DIALECTICS OF HISTORY. This is a commentary, through relevant links, of a text from Book VI of Polybius's 'Histories', a passage which formulates an original view on the way political systems develop. According to Polybius, this process rests in the last analysis on the specificities of human nature, and on the social reactions resulting from the accumulation of power. This passage is an early approach to human cultural development as an evolutionary and emergent process, a sociocultural evolution of institutions and relationships, and an emergence of complex institutions on the basis of history and political traditions. Polibius refers in his reasoning to a number of concepts which are often used in contemporary sociobiology, and it is in this context that we try to place this crucial passage.
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Keywords: Cultural evolution, History, Polybius, Anacyclosis, Political theory, Emergence, Cultural development, Societies,