Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology Edited by R.I.M. Dunbar School of Biological Sciences, University of Liverpool and Louise Barrett Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 2co7 CHAPTER 44 Evolutionary approache! to literature and drama Joseph Carroll Adaptationist literary scholars idenl 44.1. The philosophical tion as a crucial link in a causal chain orientation of adaptatlonlst duces literary artefacts. They accept the literary study that over evolutionary time the hun has evolved in an adaptive re1ationshi Adaptationist literary study has emerged as a environment, and they affirm that the distinct movement only in the past 15 years. mind' has a definite structure-a Contributors include both literary scholars who configured set of species-typical be have assimilated the ideas ofevolutionary psychol­ dispositions. The common designatio ogy and also evolutionary social scientists who species-typical configuration-both i have taken literary works as a subject of study. tradition and in evolutionary psych, Contributors from both disciplinary fields have 'human nature'. Like most traditiom appeared together in symposia, conference theorists, adaptationist literary scholars ; panels, special issues of journals, and edited literary works are produced and con1 books, and they have also entered together into fulfil the needs of human nature, that tl collaborative research projects. This blurring human nature, and that they are constJ and crossing of disciplinary boundaries points their formal organization, by the speci, to the largest philosophical principle that distin­ dynamics of human social interaction. guishes Darwinian literary study-the idea of In the following three sections I shall 'consilience'. Reintroduced into philosophical the historical context of adaptationis parlance by Edward O. Wilson (1998), the term study, survey the work that has alre, 'consilience' denotes that nature forms a unified published in adaptationist literary stu! field of determinate causal relations and that all then consider some of the direction! fields of knowledge are thus integrally connected. research might take. Within the consilient world view, physics con­ strains chemistry; chemistry constrains biology; 44.2. The historical conte biology constrains psychology, anthropology, and of adaptation1st literary s1 the other human sciences, and all these sciences constrain the study ofhuman cultural production, Literature did not become the subject 01 including literature, drama, and the other arts. demic discipline until the last two decad 638 . CHAPTER 44 Evolutionary approaches of literature and drama Contributions to adaptationist literary study nineteenth century, and until the 1940s, it con­ and scientific. In the past decade, 'deep ecology' alignment with important aspects of standard McFadden, in press; McEwan, 2005). sisted in two main forms: (i) philological and has added one more item to this list of suspect social science, and in the 1990s postmodernism programmatic expositions have focused, historical scholarship; and (ii) moralized aes­ epithets, the anthropocentric emphasis on the began to seep over into anthropology. Much 'consilient' or comprehensively interdiscif thetic commentary of a very general, impres­ specifically 'human' (see Carroll, 2004, Part 1, standard social science remains distinct from nature of adaptationist literary study (C sionistic character (see Graff, 1987; Abrams, Chapter 8). Since the middle of the 1980s, the postmodemism in that standard social scien­ 2004, Part 1, Chapter 7; Gottschall, 2003c; 1997). In the 1930s, a new methodology arose, a bulk of postmodern criticism has had a political tists, though they reject the idea of human 1999a,b; Nordlund, 2002). Other expol form of 'close reading' or formal analysis of slant, and much of it has been predominantly nature and deny that biology influences culture, have used evolutionary psychology as a f theme, tone, and style. 'The New Criticism', as political. Feminism emerged in the 1970s, none the less continue to regard scientific work within which to criticize the post this school is still called, dominated academic independently of postmodernism, as a highly methodology as a medium of objective knowl­ turalist conceptions that currently don literary study in England and America until politicized literary movement driven by the edge about a real world that exists independ­ academic literary study (Carroll, 1995, the late 1970s. By focusing on formal analysis, transformation of women's social roles and by ently of cultural and linguistic constructs. Part 1, Chapters 2 and 3, and in press d; ~ the school provided a methodology admirably the changing demographics of the university Adaptationist literary theorists have rejected 1996; D. S. Wilson, 2005). Within the Ii suited to classroom study and to the mass pro­ itself. By the middle of the 1980s, literary femi­ both the irrationalism of postmodernism and poststructuralist paradigm, psychology : duction of scholarly publication in the burgeoning nism had assimilated itself to the larger post­ the blank-slate model of human, behaviour that predominantly Freudian, and some adapta1 industry of higher education. modern creed, and almost all literary feminism informs standard social science. They affirm the scholars have used evolutionary psychol Between the middle of the 1970s and the mid­ now adopts one or another of the postmodern ideas of 'truth' and 'reality', and they think that and especially findings on incest avoida dle of the 1980s, a revolution took place in literary idioms as the medium for its preoccupation in studying the productS of the human imagina­ to criticize Freudian literary theory (5 studies. 'Poststructuralism' or 'postmodemism', with the concerns of women. In the postmodern tion, truth and reality can be most adequately 1996; Easterlin, 2000; Scalise Sugiyama, ; spearheaded by the 'deconstructive' philosophy political arena, textualism and indeterminacy served by an adaptationist understanding of Evans, 2005). of Jacques Derrida, swept across the landscape serve as means for deprecating the legitimacy of human nature. Over the past two decades or so, in ro of literature departments and infiltrated all the dominant social, psychological, or sexual norms. the same period that adaptationist literary departments of the humanities. The fundamen­ Postmodern science theory treats of science has been developing, literary study ha: tal tenets of poststructuralism are 'textualism' itself as merely a political and cultural construct 44.3. Contributions to extended itself into the bordering an and 'indeterminacy'. Textualism is the belief that that reflects and supports these dominant adaptation1st literary study cognitive science and ecology. '()ognitive rho language or 'discourse' is the elemental stuff norms (Gross and Levitt, 1994; Sokal, 1996; and 'ecocriticism' share little in the way ofCOJ of existence, that it constitutes or at least Gross et al., 1997; Koertge, 1998; Sokal and Literary study inspired by adaptationist social or concerns with one another, but both 0' fundamentally determines all forms of reality. Bricmont, 1998; Parsons, 2003). science can be grouped into six large, partially in some measure, at different points, with Indeterminacy is the belief that all meaning Until the advent of postrnodernism, academic overlapping categories: (i) general program­ tationist literary study. contradicts itselfand that no determinate mean­ literary study and standard social science ran on matic expositions, manifestos and prolegomena; In its broadest reaches, cognitive rhetori, ing is possible. If all meaning is indeterminate, separate but parallel tracks. Darwinian influences (ii) commentaries on the relation ofadaptation­ cerns itself with brain functions and wi! all texts are open to perpetual reinterpretation. on anthropology, psychology and sociology died ist literary study to the bordering fields of eco­ emotions involved in literary productio In postrnodern essays, this particular inference, out in the first two decades of the twentieth logical literary criticism and cognitive rhetoric; response, but as a_distinct school of literar though it sounds fairly determinate, has itself century and were replaced by the doctrines of (iii) discussions of the adaptive function ofliter­ ory it affiliates itself primarily with the linl been explicitly reiterated with the monotonous cultural autonomy and behaviourist conditioning ature; (iv) essays on topics of literary theory theories of Mark Johnson and George L regularity of a monastic liturgy. Given that liter­ (see Brown, 1991, pp. 1-38; Buss, 1999, Part 1; (genre, evaluation, and point of view): (v) cri­ Johnson and Lakoff argue that language is ary scholars deal with a finite body of texts, the Degler, 1991; Fox, 1989, Chapters 3 and 4; tiques of specific literary works: and (vi) studies on metaphor and that metaphors often , motivating force that attaches to this industrial Freeman, 1992, 1999, pp. 17-27; Tooby and that not only assimilate concepts from the social from 'the body', but unlike adaptationist e academic rationale can hardly be overestimated. Cosmides, 1992, p. 28). From the 1940s to the sciences but also incorporate empirical method­ cognitive rhetoricians do not attempt to id New Criticism was fundamentally conserva­ middle of the 1970s, the New Critical orthodoxy ology in the study of literature. a species-typical structure of behav tive in orientation. Its practitioners were