NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 439|26 January 2006

TEXTUAL SELECTION

Can reading the classics through ’s spectacles reawaken literary study? John Whitfield reports.

hen, at the beginning of The Iliad— and Western literature W — King Agamemnon steals Achilles’ slave-girl, Briseis, the king tells the world’s greatest warrior that he is doing so “to let you know that I am more powerful than you, and to teach others not to bandy words with me and openly defy their king”1. But literary scholar believes that the true focus of Homer’s epic is not royal authority, but royal genes. Gottschall is one of a group of researchers, calling themselves literary darwinists, devoted to studying literature using the concepts of evo- lutionary biology and the empirical, quantita- tive methods of the sciences. “Women in Homer are not a proxy for status and honour,” Those influenced by freudianism, for exam- the British author Ian McEwan, who has used says Gottschall. “At bottom, the men in the sto- ple, might read a novel looking for hints of a scientific ideas in several of his novels. “Now ries are motivated by reproductive concerns. child’s sexual desire for its parent. A marxist things are spoken of that would have routinely Every homeric raid involves killing the men would seek out economic and class conflicts. got you called a Nazi a few years ago.” The Eng- and abducting the women.” The violent world Carroll has no truck with this: “The theories lish department at Texas A&M University,SPENCER SPL/N. of the epics, he says, reflects a society where up to this point have all had a little bit of the in College Station, has recently approved a men fought for scarce mates and chieftains had truth, but have also all been fundamentally seminar on literary darwinism — the first access to as many women as slaves and concu- flawed,” he says. “None comes to terms with university course on the subject, says Brett bines2. And he thinks that everything written the fundamental facts of .” Cooke, the course leader and an expert in since Homer is open to similar analysis. Literary darwinists believe that literature Russian literature. Literary darwinism is a mode of analysis; it’s reflects a universal human nature shaped by also a bit of a crusade, an attempt to shake up , and as a result, read texts in Man to beast literary criticism. “Literary theory requires a terms of animal concerns such as mate choice, So what does it mean to read literature theory of human nature, because literature relations between kin, and social hierarchies. through a darwinian lens? At one level, it can is shaped by human motives and cognitive Such a scientistic approach can meet with seem remarkably obvious. In their recent book biases,” says Joseph Carroll of the University of hostility. “At one meeting of the Modern Madame Bovary’s Ovaries3, evolutionary psy- Missouri, St Louis. The problem, say the liter- Languages Association, someone stood up chologists David and Nanelle Barash argue ary darwinists, is that for the past few decades and called me a proto-fascist,” says Nancy that a darwinian understanding of female the humanities have, in the case of critics Easterlin, an expert in Romantic literature at mate choice shows why the eponymous adul- deconstructing texts, denied the need for a the University of New Orleans, Louisiana, teress takes lovers who are more attractive and theory of human nature, asserting that the who uses ideas from cognitive science in her accomplished than her mediocre husband. study of texts can be concerned with nothing analysis of the mother–child bond in William This may sound crass, but Carroll argues that outside those texts. Or else they have been Wordswor t h’s Prelude. the approach is capable of subtlety. A darwin- stuck on theories of human nature that are The tide may be turning, however. “The ideo- ian analysis of Jane Austen’s Pride and Preju- rooted in the subjective and the social. logical resistance is crumbling pretty fast,” says dice, he says, goes beyond the simple idea that

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women look for fortune in men, to show how such animal concerns are filtered through the vast flexibility of human behaviour, cultural conditions and individual variation. “I don’t look at Pride and Prejudiceand try to sort out what is biological and what is cul- tural,” says Carroll. “I look at it and examine the way underlying biological dispositions are organized in a specific cultural ecology. Nobody in the novel escapes the problems of mate selection, status and forming alliances. But the characters also integrate these con- cerns with human qualities, such as intelli- gence, character, morals and cultivation.” The noble, romantic characters, such as Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy, integrate successfully, hid- ing their reproductive issues beneath their Achilles (Brad Pitt) ponders the mother–child bond before heading off for some mate selection in Troy. social graces. The more comic characters, such as Elizabeth Bennett’s mother, do not resistant to the other main item on the darwin- David Amigoni, a specialist in Victorian (although in marrying off her daughters, she is ist’s agenda — quantitative research methods. prose at Keele University, UK, agrees that there quite the evolutionary success). “Among literary folk, the fear of quantification can be value in darwinian interpretations, as Romantic comedies play upon the audience’s is greater than the fear of evolution,” says well as in reading Darwin. But he insists that pleasure at seeing reproductive strategies Wilson. Gottschall agrees: “All literary scholars attitudes and readings are mutable. “Proving rewarded; tragedies appeal by invoking recoil think they’re mathematically disabled.” claims of truth is not necessarily what literary from maladaptive acts. “Stories that focus on critics are looking to do. They’re looking for non-normative behaviour, such as when A common tale patterns of meaning, rather than trying to pro- Medea kills her children, take their punch from Gottschall has analysed a database of folk tales duce an overarching theory of life.” He doubts the audience’s understanding that this is not from around the world to test the idea that a that graphs and statistics can say much about how humans behave,” says Gottschall. focus on beautiful princesses in need of rescu- literature: “The emphasis on hard data will Not everyone in the movement is equally ing and dashing hero is not just a product of probably be a bit strange to a lot of literary crit- keen on reductions to a purportedly universal patriarchal attitudes in European societies, ics. I have a concern that something that ends human nature. “I’ve always had a love–hate as some feminist critics have claimed. He up in numbers hasn’t really taken account of relationship with . found that all around the world, the majority literary value.” It’s very interesting as far as it goes, but it of folk tales feature brave heroes marrying Gottschall, though, wants to move beyond marginalizes culture and other open-ended beautiful heroines, with the two living happily literary value — or for that matter, traditional processes,” comments , a ever after5. literary criticism. Literary scholars may adopt biologist at Binghamton University, New York. Gottschall and Carroll, collaborating with their theories from other branches of knowl- Wilson is also the editor, with Gottschall, of psychologists, are also currently analysing the edge, but they also push them outwards, using The Literary Animal4, a recent collection of data from an online questionnaire that gathers their theoretical frameworks to analyse philo- essays on literary darwinism. But, Wilson people’s responses to characters in nineteenth- sophy, science, history and gender politics, for adds, literature is an immense source of data century fiction; they aim to see how these example. Ultimately, the theories of human on human behaviour: “It’s the natural history compare to the personality categories and nature that become widely held in a society of our species.” goals defined in evolutionary psychology6. will influence how that society believes people Anything that wakes literary study up to By borrowing the scientific method, says respond to their environments, and how they the idea of a shared human nature, reflected Gottschall, literary scholars can work out what should be treated. “Literary scholars aren’t throughout literature, is to be welcomed, says a story is ‘really’ about, not in some ultimate, harmless,” Gottschall says. “When we get it McEwan, one of whose lectures is reprinted in metaphysical sense, but in the sense of whether wrong it matters.” ■ The Literary Animal. “To think in evolutionary a wide range of people interpret a work in the John Whitfield is a freelance science writer terms about human nature has helped me as a same way. Such an approach, he says, is needed based in London. novelist, and to some extent as a reader,” he says. if literary scholarship is to create testable, An evolutionary emphasis might also help the durable knowledge — and to prevent argu- 1. Homer The Iliad(Penguin, London, 1950). study of literature to reverse its journey into ments being settled solely by who deploys the 2. Gottschall, J. The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer (Cambridge Univ. Press, in the press). obscurantism and irrelevance. “It’s a tragedy, sharpest rhetoric and the best memory. 3. Barash, D. P. & Barash, N. R. Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A the way that literary criticism has lost its place,” Darwinian Look at Literature(Delacorte, New York, 2005). he says. “I don’t read much literary theory, espe- 4. Gottschall, J. & Wilson, D. S. (eds) The Literary Animal: “Literary critics are looking for Evolution and the Nature of Narrative(Northwestern Univ. cially of the kind that has dominated the acad- patterns of meaning, rather than Press, Evanston, Illinois, 2005). emy for the past few decades: there’s been a 5. Gottschall, J. in The Literary Animal: Evolution and the great flatus of nonsense and pseudoscience.” trying to produce an overarching Nature of Narrative. (eds Gottschall, J. & Wilson, D. S.) 199–224 (Northwestern Univ. Press, Evanston, But even if literary theory is starting to get theory of life.” — David Amigoni Illinois, 2005). over its objection to evolution, it may be more 6. http://survey.ehap.isr.umich.edu/carroll-intro

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