Abstract
For a long time literary theorists have been concerned with the question “What is literature?”. This issue does not raise the same interest in our days. After all, what really matters is what we do with literature, whatever it is. Time has come for a comparison between literary and evolutionary studies. The question we should ask is: “Why is literature?” Where do poetic uses of language rise from? For what reason or reasons, in a remote era of our history, did our ancestors start to spend (or lavish) both time and mental energies in seemingly free and relaxed verbal activities which were unrelated to immediate needs? What are the features of human behaviour that literature tends to foster and strengthen? This article argues that, after all, the aim of literature – as in any other human activity – is nothing but survival.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Auden (1973).
- 2.
Connection: The concept of evolutionary progress, hinted to here, is discussed in the Connection in the introduction of Chap. 3.
- 3.
The Operette morali have been translated into English under several different titles: ex. Moral Tales (translated by Patrick Creagh), Manchester: Carcanet 1983; Operette Morali. Essays and Dialogues (translated by Giovanni Cecchetti), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Charles Edwardes’ nineteenth-century translation (Essays and Dialogues, London 1882) is available online at: http://digilander.libero.it/il_leopardi/translate_english/leopardi_dialogue_between_nature_and_a_soul.html.
- 4.
The modern idea of ‘literature’ is an eighteenth-century invention. In ancient times, the word letteratura indicated the condition of the man of letters, or his preparation (as in the expression un uomo di buona letteratura). On this topic see Escarpit (1958: 259–272).
- 5.
Both examples are from Schulz-Buschhaus (1979). The references to Giuseppe Parini regard the poem Il Giorno (The Day, 1963–1965), the odes La salubrità dell’aria, L’innesto del vaiolo, La musica (Salubrious Air, Variolation, Music).
- 6.
Connection: The concept of exaptation can be useful to conceptualize the re-use of cultural traits. Refer to the Connection in the introduction of Chap. 3 for further connections.
- 7.
The antinomy Verbrauchsrede/Wiedergebrauchsrede was coined by Heinrich Lausberg (1967: §11–19).
- 8.
See for example the recent synthesis of Tattersall (2012).
- 9.
The phrase is from ch. XIV of Biographia literaria (vol. VI of Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1969–2002).
- 10.
- 11.
Cf. Vargas Llosa (2011). The speech delivered in Stockholm on 7 December 2010, Elogio de la lectura y la ficción, is available online at: www.nobelprize.org.
- 12.
Dickens (1854), ed. 2002, p. 50.
- 13.
Calvino (1980), ed. 1995, p. 21.
- 14.
Cited from the nineteenth century translation by Thomas Bailey Saunders of Schopenhauer (1872).
References
Auden, W. H. (1973). Thank you, fog. Last poems. London: Faber & Faber.
Brioschi, F. (1983). La mappa dell’impero. Problemi di teoria della letteratura. Milano: Il Saggiatore.
Calvino, I. (1980). “Il midollo del leone’’. In Una pietra sopra. Torino: Einaudi. Reprinted in Calvino, I. (1995). Saggi 1945–1985 (Ed. M. Barenghi). Milano: Mondadori.
Darwin, C. (1865). On the moving and climbing of plants. Journal of the Linnean Society of London, 9, 1–118.
Dehaene, S. (2007). Les neurones de la lecture. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Dickens, C. (1854). Hard times (2012: 50). London: Sovereign.
Escarpit, R. (1958). Sociologie de la littérature. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. English edition: Escarpit, R. (1971). The sociology of literature (trans: Pick, E.). London: Frank Cass Publishers.
Escarpit, R. (1958). La définition du terme littérature: projet d’article pour un dictionnaire international des termes littéraires. In R. Escarpit & C. Bouazis (Eds.), La littérature et le social. Paris: Flammarion. 1970.
Falk, D. (2009). Finding our tongues. Mothers, infants and the origin of language. New York: Basic Books.
Gottschall, J. (2012). The story telling animal. How stories make us human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Gould, S. J., & Vrba, E. S. (1982). Exaptation. A missing term in the science of form. Paleobiology, 8(1), 4–15.
Hernadi, P. (2002). Why is literature: A co-evolutionary perspective on imaginary world making. Poetics Today, 23(1), 21–42.
Lausberg, H. (1967). Elemente der literarischen rhetorik. München: Max Hueber.
Maeterlinck, M. (1907). L’Intelligence des fleurs. English edition: Maeterlinck, M. (2007). The intelligence of flowers (trans.: Mosley, P.). New York: State University of New York Press.
Nussbaum, M. C. (1995). Poetic justice. The literary imagination and public life. Boston: Beacon Press.
Schopenhauer, A. (1872). Studies in pessimism. A series of essays (trans: Saunders, T. B.). London: Swan Sonnenschein, (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/index.html)
Schulz-Buschhaus, U. (1979). Considerazioni storiche sulla “Trivial literatur”. In “Trivial literatur?” Letterature di massa e di consumo. Trieste: Lint. Reprinted in Schulz-Buschhaus, U. (1999). Il sistema letterario della civiltà borghese. Milano: Unicopli.
Tattersall, I. (2012). Masters of the planet: The search for our human origins. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Vargas Llosa, M. (2011). In praise of reading and fiction (trans: Grossman, E.). New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Author’s Note
Thanks to Julia Weekes for Italian to English translation. These pages, intentionally conversational, do not aim to give an account of the evolutionary literary studies, which in recent decades have increased considerably in Anglo-Saxon countries. Jonathan Gottschall’s fresh and original book (2012) has recently been published in Italy under the title L’istinto di narrare. Come le storie ci hanno reso umani (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri), and summarizes a series of reflections on narration developed by the so-called Darwinian literary studies. In this fascinating field of multidisciplinary investigation, which is sustained by contributions from biology, neuroscience, pedagogy and aesthetics, the names of Joseph Carroll, Denis Dutton and Brian Boyd should be also be remembered with Gottschall.
I agree quite firmly that evolutionary studies represent a crucial area of research for the future development of literary theory. In any case, since the domain of the narrative is the most extensive one of literature, it is essential to bear in mind that not all literature is narrative: and that the origins and destinies of literature are always intertwined with those of language. If the analogy (made here) between the concepts of recycling and exaptation seems to me to merit investigation, it is not only for its theoretical importance, but also because it prevents the risk of flattening the role of literary experience to simple story telling. Simple, of course, so to speak. But things are always inevitably shown to be more complex than any of our theoretical simplifications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barenghi, M. (2016). Nothing But Survival: On the Origin and Function of Literature. In: Panebianco, F., Serrelli, E. (eds) Understanding Cultural Traits. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24349-8_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-24347-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-24349-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)