Quillette essay by Helen Pluckrose on evolutionary psychology as an approach to literary criticism:
My brief response with postscripts:
So if I read philosophy texts on truth and on beauty (let alone evolutionary psychology on them), then will I better understand Keats’ Ode On A Grecian Urn that ends, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”?
That’s what the above essay in effect says.
A mistake in it is to turn to evolutionary psychology in literary criticism as antidote to POMO. A better answer, I’d argue, is to see literature as human creation best understood by what its words aesthetically reveal to us.
That way we can avoid, for example:
“…he argues…sexual jealousy is an evolved cognitive mechanism in men, and provides evidence that the same neuropeptide underpins affection to females and aggression towards rivals in male mammals.”
in the service of literary criticism.
P.S. (see my 3 points) Weak is the way she argues Othello isn’t about race. Not that it is, but she quotes those who say race is but a construct. Troubles: 1. it’s controverted; 2. query, literary works about race; and 3, inexpert literary critics opining about race in their criticism.
And on Wallace Stevens’ The Snowman:
As per my recent few points, let someone bring evolutionary psychology to bear on this hauntingly beautiful and profound poem, and I'll note that the discordance between the latter and the former discloses someone with the sensibility of a fence post.”
