Rejoinder to the responses.(Part 1)

1. The Range of Response

Before taking up particular issues raised in the responses, I shall sort them roughly into four groups distinguished by hypothetical ratings they might have assigned to the contentions in the target article: (1) Reject, (2) Revise and Resubmit, (3) Accept with Some Revision, and (4) Accept. In the "Reject" group, I would locate three responses, those by GOODHEART, SEAMON, and SPOLSKY. They aim at general, across-the-board repudiation. "Revise and Resubmit" could be defined as "cautious partial acceptance, with some substantial reservations." This description could be applied to the responses by CREWS, HOGAN, JACKSON, JANNIDIS, and KELLETER. The third group contains commentaries by respondents who accept the idea of an evolutionary paradigm but concentrate on challenging one or more formulations in the target article: BOYD, BURGHARDT, EIBL AND MELLMANN, FOY AND GERRIG, FROMM, GRODAL, HARPHAM, MIALL, MICHELSON, SCALISE SUGIYAMA, SLINGERLAND, D. L. SMITH, MURRAY SMITH, STOREY, and VERMEULE. The fourth group consists of respondents who accept the idea of an evolutionary paradigm and occupy themselves chiefly with reflecting on its rationale, probing its conceptual structure, or extending its reach: COOKE, DISSANAYAKE, ESLINGER, GOTTSCHALL, HORVATH, SALMON, SAUNDERS, and SWIRSKI. (Part of the response co-authored by MALLORY-KANI AND WOMACK could be included in the second group, and part in the fourth.) The third and fourth groups overlap a good deal. Most of the respondents who challenge specific formulations in the target article also offer general reflections on evolutionary literary studies, and no respondent, presumably, agrees completely with every formulation in the target article. To all of those who have taken the target article seriously enough to feel that it merits a response, even if only a hostile response, my sincere thanks. To those who feel I have whittled their square responses to fit them into these four round holes, my apologies.

BRETT COOKE observes that "some readers might understandably quail at the prospect of an all-encompassing, apparently monolithic, critical perspective." They might, and they do. Under the general heading of "A Grand Theory," below, I sort these reservations into several sub-headings. Some respondents raise the question as to whether the evolutionary social sciences themselves display any recognizable consensus. Others tacitly accept the findings of evolutionary social science but still question whether biological reductions can encompass all things human. The most important alternative to adaptationist views of human nature is cultural constructivism--the idea that culture exercises autonomous causal force in human thought, feeling, and behavior. Some theorists would explicitly repudiate cultural constructivism but still worry that an evolutionary approach will strip out specifically literary modes of thought. Others argue that evolutionary psychology might be true but is often not relevant to specifically literary concerns. Some respondents suggest limitations in the range of literary works that can be effectively brought within the interpretive rubric of evolutionary psychology.

More than half of the respondents believe that evolutionary social science can provide the basis for a Grand Theory of Literature and acknowledge the necessity of incorporating concepts that are specifically literary. They also recognize that theories about the adaptive function of literature form a necessary bridge between these two domains. For many respondents, that is where agreement stops. The amount of attention the respondents devoted to the adaptive function of literature signals that this issue is both crucially important and heavily disputed. In reflecting on these responses, I identify the chief competing hypotheses, assess their cogency, and point toward further research that could lead us toward a reasoned consensus.

2. A Grand Theory

 
   There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, 
   having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and 
   that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed 
   law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most 
   beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. 
 
      (C. Darwin, Origin, 398) 

Along with Meyer Abrams, FREDERICK CREWS has been one of the most effective and sophisticated critics of poststructuralism and other "Follies of the Wise"--the title of a collection of his essays. MURRAY SMITH notes that a central theme in CREWS'S theoretical criticism is a "principled skepticism of Grand Theory as such." SMITH also observes that "history is littered with the corpses" of "advocates of this or that True Theory of Everything." Is literary Darwinism destined to become one of these unhallowed dead? ROGER SEAMON answers this question unequivocally in the affirmative. He likens literary Darwinism to Russian formalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, structuralism, and Frye's archetypal criticism. "Nothing like a science of literature emerged from these efforts, and DLS [Darwinian literary studies] will, I believe, meet the same fate as earlier efforts to make literary study a science." In his heaviest charge against the ethos of literary Darwinism, CREWS adopts an even more deprecating and dismissive stance. SEAMON merely consigns literary Darwinism to the dustheap of failed theoretical efforts prompted by a misguided scientism. CREWS treats of it as yet another manifestation of the cult of authority that has for so long been the intellectual shame of professional literary study. "Carroll writes as the chief evangelist for a single critical faction that comes near to claiming a monopoly on intellectual seriousness, and he looks forward to a day when we will all pay homage to Darwin as an earlier generation did to Foucault."