Evolution and the Cognitive Function of Fictional Narrative: A Darwinian Perspective

Literary Darwinism is a recent approach in literary studies that makes extensive use of evolutionary psychology and cognitive science to explain and make sense of literary phenomena. In this paper, I have done two interrelated things: 1. I have given a brief account of literary Darwinism and its epistemological foundations which puts it in direct opposition to the current constructivist paradigm of literary theory or simply “theory” and 2. I have given a Darwinian account of fictional narrative. To do the latter, I have adopted an anti-constructivist stance and have appealed to the ideas of Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, Jonathan Gottschall and Steven Pinker to explain the cognitive aspect of fictional narrative. I have gone so far as to formulate the idea that the fictional narrative constructs a possible world and a model of reality significantly analogous to the world we are living in, in a way that makes it possible for us homo sapiens to understand the biological and social challenges that lie ahead of us and experience them vicariously and almost uncostly. The successful fictional narratives thus, beyond their structural and genre dimensions, have a cognitive significance and making sense of them in an inter-subjective world is an adaptation for the the literary animal which in turn explains their functionality and universality.