Literature and Evolution

Introduction

Each word in my apparently simple title calls for clarification. As for literature, I take a longer and broader view than many fine scholars who see it tied to written or printed texts. ¹ As for evolution, I am intrigued by the possibility that some version of its fundamental principle–“differential survival of replicating entities”–operates not only in the history of life but perhaps also in the history of ideas. ² Even so (as regards the “and” linking the two terms), I don’t aim here at finding a role for evolution in literature. ³ Rather, I propose to explore the role of literature in evolution or, more precisely, some of the roles probably played by written literature’s oral antecedents in the co–evolution of human nature and cultures. ⁴

Given the multiplicity of ways in which literature has been intended, produced, transmitted, stored, and mentally processed, it is hardly surprising that no definition of it commands wide-spread acceptance. ⁵ One thing seems to me very clear, however: Despite the etymological derivation of “literature” from littera, the Latin word for “letter,” it is short-sighted to restrict the study of literature to texts. After all, writing has been with us for a relatively short period of human history, and even today many people around the globe get their literature through oral and gestural performance or through postliterate channels like radio, film, and television. ⁶ More to the point is the older tradition linking words like poem and concepts like poetic imagination to poesis, the ancient Greek word for making.