From Theory to Practice: Foundations of An Evolutionary Literary Curriculum The Need for a Prehistory of Literature

A pivotal moment in my graduate career occurred when a colleague confided that he saw literary study as the study of human behavior, and all study of human behavior as the study of human biology. Thus, he continued, literary study ought properly to be a sub-field of the biological sciences (Constable, personal communication). On this view, English programs would be housed in Biology Departments — as would programs in Psychology, Anthropology, Linguistics, History, Economics, Political Science, and so on. To date, of course, this has not happened and is unlikely to do so. But what if literary study were taught as the study of human behavior? What if English Departments were suddenly faced with the prospect of designing an emphasis or program in biology-based literary study? What would such a curriculum look like? Anyone who teaches specific literary texts or authors from an evolutionary perspective must eventually confront these questions because, even for a one-semester course, he/she must determine what students need to know in order to understand and apply this approach. Moreover, evolutionary literary scholars must show students why it is useful to examine storytelling in broad, biological perspective: they must demonstrate what this critical approach offers that others do not. One major advantage of evolution-based literary study is that it enables us to frame out the prehistory of literature and the cognitive architecture that scaffolds narrative. This, in turn, lends great insight into the possible functions of storytelling. Reconstructing the conditions under which storytelling first emerged enables us to generate hypotheses regarding the role(s) it played in ancestral human environments, as well as those it plays in modern life. Identifying the cognitive structures involved in narrative processing enables us to generate hypotheses regarding the selection pressures that led (directly or indirectly) to its emergence. These are not trivial questions. The study of literature is required at all levels of education, from grammar school to college, presumably because such study has been deemed important