Abstract
The most-developed area of evolutionary aesthetics is the field known as Literary Darwinism: the use of evolutionary principles to explain literature. This chapter examines three examples of Literary Darwinism: evolutionary analyses of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Homer’s Iliad. We demonstrate that an evolutionary approach misses out on everything that is most important about these classic works of literature. A careful analysis of these works shows that in fact each of them endorses the traditional theory of human nature, as both a biological and a spiritual being.
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Notes
- 1.
Gottschall, The Literary Animal, xvii.
- 2.
Ibid. xxvi.
- 3.
Barash, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, 9.
- 4.
Gottschall, The Literary Animal, 225.
- 5.
Ibid., 149.
- 6.
Ibid., 201.
- 7.
Ibid., 103.
- 8.
Ibid., 11.
- 9.
Ibid., 66–7.
- 10.
Barash, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, 8.
- 11.
Ibid., 3.
- 12.
Ibid., 5.
- 13.
Ibid., 4.
- 14.
Ibid., 8.
- 15.
Ibid., 10.
- 16.
Ibid., 101.
- 17.
Ibid., 105.
- 18.
Ibid., 103.
- 19.
Ibid., 107.
- 20.
Ibid., 118.
- 21.
Ibid., 114.
- 22.
Ibid., 116.
- 23.
Ibid., 104, 107.
- 24.
Ibid., 129.
- 25.
Ibid., 211.
- 26.
Ibid., 132.
- 27.
Carroll, Reading Human Nature, 81.
- 28.
Ibid., 91–108.
- 29.
Ibid., 96.
- 30.
Ibid., 99.
- 31.
Ibid., 103.
- 32.
Ibid., 104.
- 33.
Ibid., 107.
- 34.
Ibid., 108.
- 35.
Ibid., 107.
- 36.
Ibid., 99.
- 37.
One might also worry about the use of the term “aesthetic” as a synonym for sensual, revealing Carroll’s own reductionist assumptions.
- 38.
Gottschall, “The Way We Live Our Lives.”
- 39.
Gottschall, The Literary Animal, xix.
- 40.
Ibid., 160.
- 41.
Gottschall, The Rape of Troy, 2.
- 42.
Ibid., 57–58.
- 43.
Ibid., 3.
- 44.
Ibid., 4.
- 45.
Ibid., 55.
- 46.
Ibid., 162.
- 47.
Ibid., 4. It is not clear what he means by “tantalizing” here; presumably only one seeking a Darwinian explanation would be tantalized by such a possibility.
- 48.
Ibid., 128.
- 49.
Ibid., 138.
- 50.
Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology, 69–70.
- 51.
See, e.g. Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, 116.
- 52.
E.g. Murray 1967, 267.
- 53.
Homer, Iliad 3:155.
- 54.
Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, 205.
- 55.
Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics, 256.
- 56.
Cf. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition, 142.
- 57.
Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, 220.
- 58.
Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology, 111.
- 59.
Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition, 220.
- 60.
At least from the perspective of the Iliad; the Odyssey of course portrays Odysseus as a heroic character. Nonetheless, the traditional conception of Odysseus as a coward persisted throughout antiquity.
- 61.
Cf. Schein, The Moral Hero, 62.
- 62.
Gottschall, The Rape of Troy, 162.
- 63.
Ibid.
- 64.
Ibid.
- 65.
Ibid., 162.
- 66.
Gottschall of course gets this wrong: in the Chain of Being conception, man is at the middle, not the top.
- 67.
Ibid., 4, 141.
- 68.
Pinker, How the Mind Works, 541.
- 69.
Barash and Barash, Madame Bovary’s Ovaries, 5.
- 70.
Gottschall and Wilson, The Literary Animal, 11.
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Kaufman, W.R.P. (2016). Literary Darwinism: Can Evolution Explain Great Literature?. In: Human Nature and the Limits of Darwinism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59288-0_8
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