Abstract
In the previous chapter we saw how the meme-based theory of tradition could be adapted to explain the evolution of genres, and we examined how the perceptual and cognitive subsystems of the human mind shape the evolution of replicating cultural entities (meme-plexes). Genres are features of an adaptive landscape, caused by the tendency of the mind to extract patterns from data and create from them prototypes that then serve to canalize cultural evolution along certain lines. Generic relationships are relationships of similarity caused both by homology (the inheritance of features) and analogy (the development of similar features in similar circumstances). The existence of a prototype can blend analogy and homology, influencing the evolution of genres and leading to the creation of traditions. In this chapter we will extend the meme-based approach to an even more difficult and contested aspect of the study of cultures: the problem of authorship.2
Ac si omnia precenseas, nulla mansit ara, quails inventa est, nec intra initium stetit… Nihil autem crescit sola imitatione.
Quintilian1
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Notes
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© 2013 Michael D. C. Drout
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Drout, M.D.C. (2013). Authorship, Authors, and The Anxiety of Influence. In: Tradition and Influence in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137324603_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137324603_7
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