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Evolution and Popular Narrative
 Critical Studies

General Editor

Myriam Diocaretz

VOLUME 38

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​crst

Evolution and Popular Narrative

Edited by

Dirk Vanderbeke and Brett Cooke

LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Photography by Chris Aluka Berry.

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface.

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Contents

List of Figures vii

Introduction 1
Brett Cooke and Dirk Vanderbeke

1 Evolution and Slasher Films 23

Mathias Clasen and Todd K. Platts

2 Remaking, or Not, the Classics: Straw Dogs and Biocultural Stability

in Rape-​Revenge Movies 43
David Andrews

3 Imagining the End of the World: a Biocultural Analysis of

Post-​Apocalyptic Fiction 64
Mathias Clasen

4 On Love and Marriage in Popular Genres 83

Dirk Vanderbeke

5 Social Network Complexity in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro 106

Tamás Dávid-​Barrett, James Carney, Anna Rotkirch,
Isabel Behncke Izquierdo

6 Banal Classicism and Borrowed Ethos in the Rhetorics of Human

and Nonhuman Animals 119
Alex C. Parrish

7 The Reader is Always Right: Biopoetic and Cognitive-​Aesthetic

Aspects of Karl May’s Adventure Novel Winnetou i 132
Sophia Wege

8 Why We Read Detective Fiction: Theory of Mind in Action 156

Judith P. Saunders

9 Handel, Senesino, and Giulio Cesare, or the Irreversible Decline of

Opera Seria 182
Brett Cooke
vi Contents

10 We’ve Evolved into the Gutters: Using Cognition and a Graphic Novel

to Kill Shakespeare 205
Joe Keener

11 Theory of Mind and Mind Eating: the Popular Appeal of Jane Austen

and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 228
Kathryn Duncan

12 The Relevance of Popularity: Ecological Factors at Play in Story

Pervasiveness 245
Michelle Scalise Sugiyama

13 A Quantitative Approach to Counterintuitive Imagery in the Hebrew

Bible and the Harry Potter Novels 264
Tom Dolack

Index 293
Introduction
Brett Cooke and Dirk Vanderbeke

The Significance of Popular Narrative

We like stories. We like telling stories, and we like to listen to stories. Not only
are we, as Graham Swift defined us, “the story-​telling animal” (1984, 53; cf. also
Gottschall: 2012), we are yet more a story-​consuming species. Most of our so-
cial time is filled with telling or listening to stories, be they true or fictional,
written in books, told by friends, whispered by nasty gossips, dramatized on
stage, or shown on the screen.
The contributors to this volume share the assumption that popular or mass
narrative provides us with an incisive index into human nature. In theory, nar-
rative art could take a near infinity of possible forms, but in practice particu-
lar motifs, plot patterns, stereotypical figures, and artistic devices persistently
resurface at the expense of the enormous mass of unutilized material, all the
other things that authors and their audiences could do, but generally don’t. In
effect what obtains is not at all random, but, rather, is characterized by some
sort of aesthetic limitation, one highly indicative of the psychological contours
of our species.
On the surface it would not seem that imaginative narratives still serve any
adaptive function like foraging, reproduction, and predator avoidance. Howev-
er, tales of this sort are found in all societies at all times. This ubiquity suggests
that these contours probably promoted fitness in our evolutionary past and
still influence our behavior today. Another compelling indication is how small
children everywhere are attracted to storytelling, (cf. Boyd: 2009; and Dissan-
ayake: 2000). Clearly, this panhuman preference must have been somehow ad-
vantageous during our development as a species and may well still be so today.
Thus, we ask: what is it that we want to hear, what is it that grabs and holds
our attention, especially if more than once? What do our stories say about us?
Questions like these lead to the assumption that our desire for and choice of
narratives reflect, along with modern influences, ancient selective pressures
experienced during our common heritage of human evolution. If, as we just
suggested, we are drawn to only a small portion of the theoretically possible
range of forms and plots, indeed, often repeatedly so, might this relatively
narrow preference betoken essential features of our psychological and behav-
ioral contour: our inherited proclivities? Such is the essential perspective of
evolutionary psychology, which attempts to comprehend human behavior as

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004391161_002

2 Cooke and Vanderbeke

including a set of adaptations shaped by biological evolution. This new dis-

cipline underlies our enterprise of evolutionary criticism, elsewhere known
as literary Darwinism or biopoetics, the study of the arts as the product of
natural selection.
Heretofore most evolutionary study of narrative has focused on canonical
masterpieces, and it could well be argued that these works constitute, over
time, the most popular stories. Who would deny that Homer, Shakespeare,
Austen, the Brontës, Balzac, Dickens or Tolstoy, and even Mozart and Puccini,
rank among the most popular storytellers of all times? Moreover, some texts,
like Nikolai Gogol’s stories, arise out of discernibly popular culture; others like
Boccaccio’s and Cervantes’ works, while written for a presumably elite audi-
ence at a time of limited literacy, have gained plebian ‘legs’ of their own. Ca-
nonical works have managed to attract large audiences under the most diverse
historical and cultural conditions, albeit occasionally thanks to social pressure
and the ungentle guiding hand of school curricula. In Graphing Jane Austen, an
enormous empirical study of 19th and early 20th century British novels, Joseph
Carroll, John A. Johnson, Jonathan Gottschall, and Daniel Kruger assert that
literary classics “gain access to the deepest levels of human nature. They evoke
universal passions and fulfil deep psychological needs” (2012, 56). Like other
artistic masterpieces we expect that these works express not only the societies
that produced them but also, insofar as they enjoy intercultural currency, our
species as a whole.
However, Carroll, et al., also admit that these same great works “do not al-
ways produce mimetically accurate representations of human nature” (2012,
56). In the construction of the pro-​social and egalitarian heroes and heroines
described in their analysis of more than a hundred classic nineteenth century
English novels, one may well suspect a didactic presentation of humanity as
it should be, but not as it is, while their villains are exaggerated versions of
actually perceived human features that are criticized and need to be amended.
One of the principal aims of our collection is, then, to complement the picture
obtained from narrative classics by looking at stories that are enjoyed by the
great majority of humankind. Peter Swirski notes that in the 1985 American
book market, so-​called classics amounted to less than 3% of the fiction sold
(1999, 4).1 He argues that the “demarcation of a field of study that leaves 97%
of its subjects camping outside the city gates must be regarded as methodolog-
ically suspect” (3). This supports Leslie Shephard’s assertion that

1 Similarly, classical music takes up only about 3% of the Western recording industry (Midg-
ette: 2010).
Introduction 3

To understand the phenomenon of man, we must study the tremendous

popularity of the banal, the grotesque, anti-​social and dishonest, side by
side with the cheaply printed remnants of old romances and the frag-
ments of folk poetry which have a beauty beyond all sophisticated verse.
(1973, 36)

Popular narrative is quite obviously a relevant phenomenon; to dismiss it from

serious inquiry would limit the validity of theoretical claims regarding aesthet-
ic experience, reader response, artistic techniques, narrative strategies, and
various other concerns that otherwise are based on a small percentage of the
texts produced  –​and, consequently, of their actual readers. Popular culture
should be credited as the vastly more representative choice, even if often in the
face of negative critical evaluation.
One argument for focusing on narrative classics is that they continue to at-
tract consumers in various times and climes, thus amassing substantial and
widespread audiences. By contrast, works that come under the label of pop-
ular culture may have a relatively short shelf life and are frequently forgotten
after a brief period of relative success. However, their momentary success is
­frequently enormous; some stories often attract and engage immense audi­
ences. Moreover, they frequently generate highly imitative works that usually
rely on repetitive, well-​established narrative strategies and patterns that have
been successful in varied cultural contexts over a significantly long time. We
thus propose to complement the common perspective that focuses on canon-
ical highbrow texts by studying cultural artifacts and generic forms that ap-
peal to the widest audiences, even if transient. Moreover, we suggest that the
analysis of individual stories or films should be supplemented by a focus on
narrative patterns and motifs that recur over time in a multitude of texts. And,
indeed, such patterns are detectable in numerous genres from antiquity to the
present, from myth and legend to the latest blockbusters –​some of which are,
in fact, re-​visions of ancient myths and legends. If the ultimate task is to use
tales to describe the entire species, this approach seems to us more academ-
ically sound than to focus on a few possibly less characteristic masterpieces.
Regarding the terms popular culture and popular narrative, amongst which
we include literature, theatre, film, and even some operas, we may detect some
embarrassment, an urge to find a value free denomination for stories that in
earlier times ranged from low or lowbrow, to trivial,2 trash (Simon) or simply
bad. The canon wars not only challenged the traditional institutional bias for
the works of ‘dead white men’ and opened curricula, anthologies, and research

2 In German the common term was, and occasionally still is, Trivialliteratur. See Nusser.
4 Cooke and Vanderbeke

lines to include previously marginalized texts, they also questioned the alleged
elitism of customary academic pursuit and allowed for the inclusion of hith-
erto shunned genres and modes in criticism. Consequently, derogatory termi-
nology was dropped in favor of the more neutral popular, allowing for some
ambivalence and confusion as many canonical texts are, of course, also genu-
inely popular. In this volume the term will be used predominantly in contrast
to the classics and refer to those cultural products that were and often still are
dismissed for their alleged lack of artistic merit.
In Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture, Douglas Lanier writes:

Popular culture, so the story goes, is aesthetically unsophisticated, dis-

posable, immediately accessible, and therefore shallow, concerned with
immediate pleasures and effects, unprogressive in its politics, aimed at
the lowest common denominator, mass-​produced […] principally for fi-
nancial gain. (2001, 3)3

Catherine Salmon and Donald Symons deepen the classical-​popular distinc-

tion with their suggestion that:

Perhaps ‘great’ works of fiction are those that most fully engage organiz-
ing adaptations, while ‘lesser’ fiction, including genre romance novels,
may primarily pick the locks of the brain’s pleasure circuits. (2010, 472)

Defining “organizing adaptations” as “systems that produce foresight, planning,

and empathy,” Salmon and Symons point to the pro-​social tendencies of ‘clas-
sic’ or ‘mainstream’ culture that could well be argued to be a means by which
the dominant class, including educational systems and religious organizations,
pacifies subdominant classes, as well as itself (2010, 472). “Pick[ing] the locks
of the brain’s pleasure circuits,” popular or ‘mass’ culture provides the plea-
sures rarely promoted by the establishment; these gratifications pay for them-
selves, if only because they constitute what large numbers of people want to
read and watch, while classics often depend on social support, educational re-
quirements, and philanthropy. Audiences for popular narrative are likely to be
much larger than for mainstream culture; greater financial considerations are
involved, dictating wider mass appeal, often at the cost of individual expression
and moral concerns, which might deter some readers. Popular storytellers tend

3 See also Swirski, who reports the common view that “popular literature is objectionable be-
cause, unlike high literature, it is mass-​produced by profit-​oriented hacks whose sole aim is
to gratify the base tastes of a buying audience” (1999, 7).
Introduction 5

to adopt an unobjectionable style and focus on themes and imagery that are
direct, often hackneyed, in their appeal. The relevant issue for our volume is the
discrepancy between the perceived aesthetic quality of classic and/​or main-
stream narrative and the favorable response of the audience usually rendered
instead to popular and mass entertainments. Indeed, while artistic originality
and creativity is an important and almost defining aspect of canonical culture
(Easterlin: 2012, 53; Martindale: 2008, 232), popular story-​telling is far less inno-
vative. Genre narratives often follow patterns that have previously been proven
to be successful –​occasionally the term formula fiction is used to describe texts
that seem to reiterate specific narrative patterns and motifs endlessly.
According to the highly influential critic Victor Shklovsky, readers and view-
ers derive satisfaction from novel forms that involve defamiliarization, a cer-
tain recalcitrance of the artistic work, and thus an artificially prolonged pro-
cess of perception (1988, 20). In the course of the 20th century this view has
been developed to the point that artistic works necessarily remain beyond our
reach, and that we derive our pleasure in reading from an erotic desire for a
meaning that is endlessly deferred. According to perspectives like Shklovsky’s,
works of genre/​formula/​popular/​mass narrative, therefore, ought, to be te-
dious, and consumers should dismiss such texts as predictable and facile and
turn to more complex and demanding works that allow for intricate reader-​
text interaction and sophisticated, if always inconclusive, interpretation. But
this notion is not supported by sales figures and viewership ratings.
Instead, audience measures indicate that new versions of the same formu-
las are eagerly purchased and devoured. The consumption of popular narra-
tive can be seen as the continual attempt to repeat “pleasures fondly remem-
bered” (Disch: 2005, 6) Rather than encourage variety and deter habituation,
producers prefer to market near-​copies of successful models. And it seems as
if such strategies are quite successful. Janice A. Radway, for example, argues
that contemporary “romance novels obviously provide a reading experience
enjoyable enough for large numbers of women so that they wish to repeat that
experience whenever they can” (1991, 44). This wish is obviously fulfilled, as the
women Radway interviewed “insisted repeatedly that when they are reading
a romance, they feel happy and content” (1983, 62). According to Catherine
Salmon, romance novels alone “account for 13.2% of mass market paperback
sales in the United States” (2012, 152). Indeed, identifying forms and themes
that will endure and possibly thrive on manifold repetition should be recog-
nized as revealing a vein of nearly unquenchable human desires, very likely an
expression of deep-​seated biases shaped by natural selection.
We should be warned, however, that the autoportrait of our species gained
from popular narratives is not necessarily a pretty one. Culture, certainly
6 Cooke and Vanderbeke

including the arts, is properly envisaged here as a means of greatly accelerat-

ing adaptation to ever-​changing physical and social environments, while our
genome changes at a comparably glacial pace. Consequently, the aesthetic
preferences indicated by our fondness of popular genres, in particular our
obvious fascination with sex and violence, may well offend modern ethical
standards.
If such works are usually regarded with disdain –​they are said to be vulgar,
low, slightly immoral, and maybe even a bit unsavory –​so are the pleasures
gained from them. We suggest that some of the most prominent desires and
pleasures that are fulfilled by popular culture and literature express atavistic
elements in our nature, i.e., those aspects that are very much the subject of
evolutionary approaches to literature. According to an old cinema joke, a Ber-
lin film-​goer exclaimed in the 1920’s, “For a 50 pfennig ticket I can expect that
my lowest instincts are tickled.” This demand still seems to be valid: Blake Sny-
der suggests that a screenwriter should ask, “Would a Caveman Understand?”

Does your plot hinge on primal drives like survival, hunger, sex, protec-
tion of loved ones, or fear of death? At the root of anyone’s goal in a movie
must be something that basic, even if on its surface it seems to be about
something else. (2005, 158)

Notably, Joseph Carroll comes to much the same conclusion, albeit stated in
more formal, academic language:

Literature reflects and articulates the vital interests of human beings as

living organisms. Because reproduction is central to human motivations,
it is central also to the organization of meaning in literary representa-
tions of human behavior. (2001, 9).

Since reproduction requires both access to a mate and survival to at least the
point of mating, both Snyder and Carroll, in effect, perceive the motivating
interests for love stories and cliff-​hangers.
Carroll frequently invokes a folk understanding of human nature that au-
thors share with their readers and which thus allows them to create convincing
characters and stories (e.g., 2011, 110). In Graphing Jane Austen, Carroll et al.,
however, redirect Darwinist research to ask not only how evolutionary crit-
icism may help us to understand literature but also whether literary works
could be “mined as rich sources for data for formal psychological studies” (2012,
20). They analyze literary works that were selected according to the following
criteria: “contemporary popularity and esteem, influence on other writers, and
Introduction 7

lasting critical reputation” (2012, 2). These are basically the defining features of
canonical literature.
Yet do canonical texts really give an accurate depiction of human nature?
For example, Carroll et al., claim that,

Male protagonists in our data set are relatively moderate mild characters.
They are introverted and agreeable, and they do not seek to dominate
others socially. They are pleasant and conscientious, and they are also
curious and alert. They are attractive, but they are not very assertive or
aggressive. (2012, 46)

This is an interesting result, one that validates further evolutionary inquiry.

But would the Graphing Jane Austen findings have been similar if Carroll’s
team had focused on popular culture, if, amongst contemporary forms, highly
successful genres like the adventure novel, the western, science fiction, horror,
crime fiction, or spy novels had been included in their investigation. How does
the prevalence of male protagonists who “look like slightly muted or moder-
ated versions of female protagonists” (2012, 8) square with figures like James
Bond, Mike Hammer or Sergio Leone’s “man with no name,” not to speak of the
obvious popular fascination regarding such incarnations of evil as Darth Vader,
Voldemort, or Hannibal Lecter?4 Why do the most prominent actors regularly
play villains in superhero movies, if the audience supposedly prefers mild and
egalitarian characters? This fascination with villains does not seem to be of
recent origin; according to John Cox, apart from human beings, the devil was
the most staged figure in English drama from its beginnings to the closing of
the theaters in 1642 (2000, 5), and the success of thoroughly malignant figures
like Shakespeare’s Richard iii or Baron Scarpia indicate that people respond to
evil not only with horror, but also with delight.
To be fair, Carroll’s team measured ethical approval, while we attempt to
gauge the pleasures of popular narrative, very likely a crucial difference.
Whether or not critics and scholars approve of works of popular culture, un-
doubtedly page turners, smash hits, and the like accomplish the central role
of art: even if only on a temporary basis, they attract audience attention, usu-
ally lots of it.5 This consideration deserves scrutiny, as does the observation
that popular culture is characteristically and viably commercial; in effect, it

4 With some reservations, similar claims could be made about female figures like Lady de Win-
ter or Cruella de Vil.
5 Cf. Nancy Easterlin’s adroit study of the considerable, but transient, popularity of narrative
poetry by Felicia Heymans (2012).
8 Cooke and Vanderbeke

constitutes a self-​generating phenomenon. Popular culture exists because we

desire it, not because some elite thinks it is good for us. Indeed, it springs up
like weeds and is difficult to suppress, like pornography and, in some social
and political environments, rock music  –​often despite attempted controls
exercised by more regimented societies. Inasmuch as ‘classic’ works are often
promoted, if not also assigned, by various power structures, their sales figures
and other ­popularity measures are probably inflated.
Like Carroll et al., we ask how far an understanding of literature and literary
phenomena can provide data and contribute to the discussion of our evolu-
tionary past and our consequent profile as a species. We suggest, however, that
popular literature and culture are at least as valuable as the classics for this
endeavor and may serve as a necessary complement to results derived from
research into high art. This has already been attempted with specific topics or
motifs like the monster (Clasen:  2012), crime detection (Grodal:  2010),6 and
mating strategies in Harlequin romances (Fisher and Cox: 2010).7 Salmon and
Symons scanned ‘slash fiction,’ a kind of fan fiction inventing romantic and/​
or sexual relationships between famous fictional same-​sex characters (2010),
much as Salmon earlier contrasted female romances with male pornogra-
phy (2005).8 Moreover, Brian Boyd discussed Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who!
(2009), Eric S. Rabkin wrote about “The Descent of Fantasy” (1999), and David
Bordwell scans some popular films in his Poetics of Cinema (2008).
As mentioned above, canonical literature is often distinguished by the fact
that it has a strong didactic message, and that the emotions displayed in it are
non-​adaptively refined and exalted. To give an extreme example: it would be
very difficult, indeed, to claim that Petrarchan sonnets with their vision of a
pure and unconsummated love, arguably the most successful poetic form in
the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance and still valued today, offer an accu-
rate image of human nature and the evolved mating strategies of our ancestors.
If they did, humanity would have gone extinct long ago. Popular narratives are
not necessarily more realistic or accurate in their depiction of human nature,
but the underlying desires and forces they describe are more raw and direct.
As Salmon and Symons posited, mass-​oriented works are geared to gratify their
audiences rather than to turn their readers and spectators into better persons
or to raise their awareness of grave social concerns.

6 Judith Saunders continues this line of inquiry in her contribution to this volume with an
overview of detective fiction.
7 Dirk Vanderbeke takes up this discussion in his assessment of love and marriage in popular
genres.
8 Cf. as well Ellis and Symons’ work on pornography and romances (1990).
Introduction 9

Evolutionary criticism, like evolutionary psychology, largely grew out of

comparative zoology and anthropology, by inquiring on the one hand what
distinguishes our species, and on the other hand by seeking ‘human universals’
amongst otherwise diverse cultures. Likewise, much of its early focus was on
ancient selection pressures that also pertain to most animals –​e. g., predator
avoidance, mate selection, incest aversions –​that still motivate many human
biases and phobias. This intensely interdisciplinary field has become, as one
might expect, increasingly diverse as external lines of inquiry are incorporat-
ed, but all Darwinians expect to establish a ‘consilience’ constituting a single,
continuous, all-​encompassing body of knowledge, seamlessly connecting the
arts to all other sciences (Wilson: 1998).
This volume is structured into four sections, each focusing on one promi-
nent aspect of evolutionary criticism, following to some degree the chronolog-
ical development of our field of inquiry. Thus, the first section presents essays
on atavistic fears and desires closely linked to the most important forces in evo-
lution for all species, i.e., survival and reproduction. This is followed by chap-
ters that discuss social intelligence and human group behavior. As evolutionary
criticism is closely linked to cognitive studies, the last two sections contain in-
vestigations into specific cognitive features that are either integral elements of
the stories and their characters, most importantly Theory of Mind, or play some
role in the transmission and reception of the respective narratives. All of these
topics are, however, closely linked with each other, and thus our different chap-
ters almost invariably touch upon more than one aspect of evolutionary criti-
cism; inevitably there is some thematic overlap between the different sections.

Atavistic Fears and Desires

Demonstrating how popular narrative offers outlets for primitive impulses,

Mathias Clasen and Todd K.  Platts note how villains in ‘slasher films’ make
use of crude weapons, even when more modern ones are readily available. By
wielding knives and other sharp weapons, perpetrators expose themselves to
immediate physical risk as they need to approach their intended victims very
closely. Homicide at a safe distance, e.g., with a pistol, however, apparently
does not elicit the extreme emotional gratification that such films thrive on,
despite manifold repetition of this theme. Similarly, in other action features
and even in science fiction movies, combat usually culminates in a mano a
mano encounter between the principal antagonists, rather than by settling the
issue impersonally from a distance of, say, two parsecs. Apparently, this is more
satisfying for audiences, which speaks to the enduring interest of anachronistic
10  Cooke and Vanderbeke

motifs and narrative formulas that are no longer of crucial relevance in our
modern environments. The strong emotional involvement of spectators indi-
cates the impact of such works, and while audiences have long since learned
that there is no need to duck before the advance of a speeding train on the
screen, Clasen and Platts cite how viewers in a cinema will often shout out
warnings to the psychopath’s victims on the screen –​all, of course, in vain.
Horror media, like slasher films, comprise just one example of art’s ability
to elicit strong emotions reliably. A similar ‘evolved fear of predation’ may be
discerned in the disproportionate attention we give to shark attacks, as op-
posed to the much greater danger of drowning. Although such threats from
predators are rare in modern environments, their continuing effectiveness, in
particular in visual media, speaks to the likelihood that they reflect ancient
environments where such perils exerted significant adaptive pressure.
Such considerations may explain why horror films frequently thrive in the
face of hostile reviews. Itself a thoroughly rational and empirical enterprise,
evolutionary criticism is especially well equipped to account for irrational and
seemingly irrepressible emotional responses. Our willingness to experience
negative feelings like fear, terror and even disgust, and the persistence of horri-
fying elements in narratives throughout history indicate their relevance in our
mental ecology and suggest an evolved tendency to expose ourselves to such
emotions in order to learn to cope with them and to ‘be prepared.’
A common observation made by our contributors is that popular narrative
makes frequent recourse to strong stimuli; by and large, it is not known for
its subtlety or sensitivity. It is of interest to evolutionary inquiry that this of-
ten comprises reference to issues of outdated adaptive significance. Such is
the claim made by David Andrews in his study of ‘rape-​revenge’ films that
originally were infamous for their violence, yet, perhaps for this very reason,
achieved such a degree of success that they were remade into yet more lurid
versions. Of course, remakes are a particularly strong version of thematic rep-
etition, and Andrews diagnoses a two-​fold stability. On the one hand, there is
the persistence of generic formulas even in cases in which the new versions
run against the beliefs, perspectives, and agendas that informed the original
films. On the other hand, one can detect a predictability of human behavior
that challenges concepts of free will and suggests that, in particular under ex-
treme stress, human action tends to follow narrowly circumscribed patterns,
indicating recourse to evolutionary blueprints for our behavior. Our tolerance
for repetition in formulaic narratives is, then, a strong indication of our predi-
lection for their motifs and narrative patterns.
A common complication in evolutionary criticism arises when contem-
porary artists consciously apply their awareness of Darwinist thought. Sam
Introduction 11

Peckinpah, director of the original Straw Dogs (1971), was influenced by Robert
Ardrey’s ethological views on human territoriality and aggression, a precur-
sor to evolutionary psychology. Rod Lurie, however, who directed the remake,
was hostile to Darwinian perspectives. Of course, it is necessary to distinguish,
if possible, between works that are intentionally based on evolutionary phe-
nomena and those that are influenced unconsciously or instinctively by our
inherited features. But then the result for the audiences and the responses may
be very similar. For the remake of Straw Dogs, Andrews argues, that this is very
much the case, despite the director’s announced views and the more feminist
spin to the protagonist’s violent response to her assailants.
Reproduction and the avoidance of premature mortality constitute the
major adaptive bottlenecks that determine the success or failure of our lives.
As such, they are also an important feature of the post-​apocalyptic, a genre
whose popularity would seem to be counter-​intuitive. The end of our world as
such would not appear to be a truly entertaining subject, but it has resurfaced
time and again ever since the first myths and religious prophecies, and it is, of
course, also an important and highly successful sub-​genre in science fiction.
Obviously, it attracts large audiences, whether as stories about global natural
disasters, pandemics, zombie apocalypses, or self-​inflicted nuclear holocausts.
Mathias Clasen suggests that narratives about worst-​case scenarios may tap
into our evolved abilities to imagine future dangers and even catastrophic
events, i.e., psychological mechanisms that help coping with disasters and rad-
ical change. As Peter Freese argues, “truly apocalyptic literature is never inter-
ested in the end only but always searches for new beginnings” (17), and indeed,
such narratives usually proceed with epic tales of the survivors’ new lives in an
environment that allows for individual and frequently heroic action.
Thus, it may well be that the successful depiction of immense disasters and
apocalyptic events is not merely a matter of adding more and more lurid con-
tent. Survival and reproduction once more become essential elements within
fundamental struggles that are inherently meaningful as the future existence
of humanity depends on them. On the one hand, these goals typically depend
on (re)establishing forms of willing cooperation amongst us, one of the most
socially-​inclined species on Earth, on the other hand, renewed life in small and
occasionally migratory tribal communities may also include a reversion to at-
avistic behavioral patterns, struggles for dominance, and violent encounters
with competing and less socially inclined groups.
Reproduction and conflict are also the focus of Dirk Vanderbeke’s argu-
ments about love and marriage in popular narrative. Reviewing discussions
of mating strategies in evolutionary psychology and biology, he cautions
us against the common assumption that our distant ancestors practiced
12  Cooke and Vanderbeke

long-​term pair-​bonding, based on female selection of the most promising and

co-​operative mating partner. Alternative scenarios need also be taken into
consideration. He proposes that popular genres like the romance novel and
the adventure plot provide insight into this issue, suggesting that male-​female
interaction in our evolutionary past was hardly a harmonious precursor of the
modern nuclear family. In romance novels, quite frequently the heroine has
to compete with other females for the desirable dominant male, while in the
various forms of the adventure plot male-​male competition is the focus of the
action. In adventure and action narrative, reproductive success usually follows
victory in combat, but then male bonding, often in the form of a same-​sex side-​
kick, frequently seems to be more important than romantic attachment. Thus,
this chapter employs popular narrative not only to diagnose atavistic desires in
our literary and cultural preferences, but also to challenge theoretical assump-
tions about our distant past that may well project our own behavior and values
onto our evolutionary ancestors.

Social Intelligence

One of the persistent issues in evolutionary theory concerns the biological

units that are affected by selection. Of course, the individual organism is chief-
ly in the focus, but alternative theories suggest multi-​level selection ranging
from the “selfish gene” (Dawkins: 1976) to the species. Early in the millennium,
evolutionary psychologists revived the notion of ‘group selection’ to explain
our propensity for self-​sacrifice and generous behavior. They extolled the at-
tractive forces of sociality as features that counterbalance aggressive, Machia-
vellian or agonistic features in human nature. Similarly, the Graphing Jane Aus-
ten project gauged and found high levels of pro-​sociality amongst protagonists
of 19th and early 20th century classic fiction. Achieving the requisite balance
of competing interests and needs entails great interest in social intelligence, a
major factor in all narrative.
Intrasocial politics can arguably constitute the most vital information in
that it entails the patterns by which most of us must try to live. How dense a
matrix of personal connections can be conveyed on stage is demonstrated by
Tamás Dávid-​Barrett, James Carney, Anna Rotkirch, and Isabel Behncke Izqui-
erdo in the case of The Marriage of Figaro, an extremely popular play by Pierre
Beaumarchais that provided the basis for a yet more successful opera by Loren-
zo da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Half of the mathematical poten-
tial of possible interrelationships between the nine soloists are sketched and
explored in the course of roughly three hours of stage action; the producers
Introduction 13

create a drama coherent even when sung that evinces how these characters
think about virtually everyone else. Beaumarchais, da Ponte, and Mozart great-
ly expand the limits of social complexity which can plausibly be depicted on
stage. Moreover, this involves no fewer than a third of the dramatis personae
appearing in disguise. Even if the audience recognizes these personages, as
usually is the case, this requires that it then imagines the ‘false belief’ of those
on stage who don’t; this distinction constitutes the classic litmus test of The-
ory of Mind, our capacity for modeling the mental states of others. Like other
forms of narrative, opera has trained its audiences to understand greater de-
grees of social complexity, increasingly emulating the actual societies that pro-
duce them. Notably, opera, like ancient drama, began as mono-​drama; for its
first two centuries it was limited to solo arias and other monologues, relieved
by only a few duets and choruses. Modern opera began when Mozart managed
to weave seven characters intelligibly into the twenty-​five-​minute finale to the
second act of Figaro.
Another distinctive feature of Figaro is that its social matrix is also a dy-
namic one, both for the society that it depicts as well as the one it entertains –​
and educates: servants strive for newly recognized human rights by outwitting
their masters, women turn the tables on men, liberating and employing greater
portions of cultural potential. Notably Figaro is especially celebrated in the
economically and, many would claim, socially, most successful societies that
subsequently have encouraged wider roles for women and their underclasses.
Stories can be a double-​edged sword in these respects, and popular narrative
may, on the conservative hand, preserve traditions and thus the contours of
the societies that perpetuate them, but also, on the liberal hand, probe their
limitations and expand possibilities for action.
With Alex Parrish’s paper on “borrowed ethos,” another aspect of social life
is explored, the strategy of taking shelter under the symbolic presence of an
authority in order to partake in its status or reputation and thus gain a few
rungs in group hierarchy. We find this phenomenon every day in our lives, e.g.,
when commercial brands use allusive names to trigger associations with estab-
lished sources of status and ethos. Similarly, in literary texts some authors em-
ploy languages of yore to evoke notions of wisdom and feelings of awe, while
others concoct non-​existent languages of fictional antiquity and reputation to
raise their imaginary worlds in our estimation. This borrowing of ethos is, of
course, not limited to humans but also, as Parrish notes, appears in some ani-
mals, further indicating an evolutionary heritage for our behavior.
Borrowed ethos can also be recognized behind another form of narrative
repetition. Various well-​established figures like Sherlock Holmes, James Bond,
Elizabeth Bennett, Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers, or Shakespearean
14  Cooke and Vanderbeke

characters have acquired notoriety well beyond their original texts and thus
they appear in ever new versions and sequels to their tales, viewed from unex-
pected perspectives and cast in diverse and occasionally contradictory roles.
Now that the popularity of Holmes, Bond, and their peers has been established,
why waste these achievements in public visibility when they can be continual-
ly exploited in more stories? Thus, in popular culture charismatic heroes (and
villains) can continue to accrete new meanings –​even if they turn into empty
metaphors when they have been cast into too many conflicting roles and their
defining features have been diluted or completely lost in the process. Figures
like Dracula or Batman have been reinvented in so many different versions that
they can appear as villains or heroes, humane or monstrous, compassionate
or sociopathic, stereotypical or complex. Popular narrative is of particular in-
terest when characters, even mere concepts, take on lives of their own, a topic
that will also be explored in the chapters by Kathryn Duncan and Joe Keener
(see below).

Theory of Mind

With borrowed ethos, we also re-​enter our discussion of Theory of Mind and
thus the field of cognitive studies which examines our mental apparatus and
its consequent functions in light of natural selection. Recent evolutionary crit-
icism builds directly on new findings in cognitive philosophy, psychology and
even neuro-​physiology. Brain defects, psychological syndromes, and such dif-
ferent mental states as autism have made evident numerous biological adapta-
tions in common cognition and behavior. For example, autists to some degree
lack Theory of Mind. ToM is obviously conducive not only for social bonding
and organization, but also for manipulation and its counterpart, cheater de-
tection.
Some of the most prominent figures in popular culture, who are also reg-
ularly recycled in remakes, adaptations, and derivative cultural products, are
heroes endowed with particular abilities in modeling other minds, i.e., famous
detectives like Sherlock Holmes. These texts present the reader with a near-​
perfect version of ToM, which allows us not only to follow the hero’s usually
immaculate reasoning but also his similarly unfailing conjectures about the
intentions and plans of adversaries. Judith Saunders discusses aspects of uni-
versal human nature like deception and the employment of ToM in a wide
survey of detective fiction, where, as Lisa Zunshine argues, the predominant
issue in the ‘game of cat-​and-​mouse’ is detecting which of the characters is
lying (2006, 130–​132).
Introduction 15

One of the unacknowledged qualities of evolutionary psychology and crit-

icism is that they both emphasize the psychological similarity of the whole
species; these shared proclivities allow us to readily partake of each other’s sub-
jective states of mind. Empathy, so crucial a feature of all narrative, as it is for
spontaneous cooperation and social bonding, constitutes a kind of emotional
contagion which artists can exploit. In consequence, it is sometimes difficult
to resist feeling sympathy. With its occasionally rapid and widespread success,
popular narrative is able to demonstrate this point when great ranges of audi-
ences more or less automatically partake of the same affinities. Identification
with characters allows us to more firmly grasp their state of mind, take their
experiences to heart, and remember them. In her study of Karl May, a 19th cen-
tury German writer of adventure novels set in the American Wild West, Sophia
Wege suggests that one of the distinguishing features of popular stories is that
this process is facilitated, more so than with most mainstream fiction, in that
writers like May ensure that readers will be in no doubt as to the sympathies
of his characters. In these stories, ToM predominantly does not serve to solve
a crime of the past, but rather to anticipate hostile action in the near future.
Again, with May the heroes’ ability to read their enemies’ minds verges on the
superhuman; moreover, the reader is invited to share their almost infallible
conjectures. In consequence, novels like May’s not only allow us to partake of
nearly perfect interpersonal reasoning, via identification the reader also expe-
riences the precise outcome of the anticipated action –​and as our expectations
are fulfilled, it is not only the hero but also the reader who is “always right.”
May’s fictional and quite implausible stories, including extraordinary hunt-
ing and fighting skills coupled with near-​perfect ToM regarding the intentions
and plans of adversaries, were not only eagerly devoured but also taken at face
value by contemporary audiences; his heroes of a largely imaginary Wild West
became role models for readers who lived in urban European environments.
Not only are our fears still firmly in the grip of our evolutionary past, but so are
our delights and our desires. We far more readily identify with a superior hunt-
er or warrior in an imaginary –​or fantastic –​wilderness than with a realistic
middle-​class existence in a modern urban environment. Arguably, our mind
still craves information that was advantageous for our ancestors, even if this
information has long outlived its usefulness –​and, of course, such information
is even more appealing if encoded in narrative form and told with the author-
itative voice of a famed, albeit only fictional, hero, such as May’s frontiersman.
Similarly, Torben Grodal points out that,

Fighting and aggression, as well as bonding with brothers-​in arms, are as

prominent as ever in visual fictions and video games […], even though
16  Cooke and Vanderbeke

most people nowadays live in societies in which the majority of adults

never engage in violent confrontation. (2009, 6)

In other words, our commonly successful aesthetic preferences evince the an-
cestral environments that shaped them. This is a classic tenet of evolutionary
psychology. Popular narrative generally reflects the slow pace of alteration to
our genome and therefore our psychology, whereas our culture is developing
at an accelerating rate.
Along with the ease of ToM that is characteristic of popular narrative, Wege,
and also Saunders in her discussion of detective novels, note the ubiquity of
happy endings. Even the apocalyptic tales analyzed by Clasen frequently end
on a positive note. Why is such tacitly optimistic literature, often characterized
as escapist, not maladaptive, if it imagines an unrealistic world of relatively
facile solutions, rather than preparing us for the vale of frustrations we occupy?
One possible response is that such stories provide relief from actual stresses,
a virtue in and of itself. Moreover, cheater detection, a crucial factor not only
in detective fiction but also in many other popular genres, is among the most
important concerns in social life. An added consequence is that positive de-
nouements have the beneficial effect of raising a reader’s morale: they impart
a useful illusion that solutions can be found to complex and, in many ways,
uncontrollable situations. Such optimism at least nudges up the prospects for
such outcomes. This may be preferred to the disillusionment and bleak view
often attributed to modern classics, significantly less common in pre-​modern
literature. Another consideration is that uplifting conclusions also support the
prevalent morality, thus rendering a didactic service to society, teaching us
something along the lines of ‘crime doesn’t pay,’ even when actual police blot-
ters suggest otherwise. In this respect, some genres of popular narrative may
be socially and ethically more conservative than, for example, mainstream
novels since the late 19th century.
However, popular narratives are not merely the invariable recapitulation of
our ancestral fears and desires or the appeal to mental states that evolved in
the Pleistocene; they also reflect cultural developments and successions of var-
ious formats that have proved to be temporarily successful. While it seems as
if some narratives, e.g., mythical quests, are here to stay no matter what social
and environmental changes take place, new, relevant stories and genres will
enter the repertoire when the occasion arises. Thus, the detective story takes
up elements from narratives about sin and retribution and locates them in a
modern urban environment. Similarly, the Western frequently resurrects nar-
rative patterns of Renaissance revenge drama in a new setting and with new
cultural significance.
Introduction 17

The history of popular culture is also one of literary and cultural evolution
and transition from genres that have outlived their popularity and commer-
cial usefulness to more fashionable variants that often present similar stories
of love and conflict, of mating and survival, in new garbs that reflect present
cultural conditions and demands, e.g., when the horse operas of the Wild West
gave way to the space operas of science fiction as one of the new master genres.
This phenomenon, however, is not restricted to our times, as Brett Cooke ar-
gues in his survey of Baroque opera, a form popular throughout Western Eu-
rope at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
Lavish productions were filled to the brim with ancient storylines that reveled
in topics pertinent to reproduction and survival; moreover, they also “borrowed
ethos” by tickling our interest in the high and mighty, offering tales about so-
cial elites, kings and queens, and frequently even divine personages. Still, opera
seria ultimately went into decline when a more fruitful direction was sensed in
the depiction of more realistic and u ­ sually less heated human lyricism.
Alex Parrish’s “borrowed ethos” is again noticeable in an outrageous, if not
also ironic and frequently funny, violation of authorial license. Popular revi-
sions allow fictional personages to ‘live lives of their own,’ in and beyond their
original texts. In their new coinage, they are by no means limited to the writer’s
vision, but gain new lives and also new audiences. Currently, favorite texts are
invaded and their characters press-​ganged into service by wholly incommodi-
ous interlopers in a new genre: mashups. The as of now most successful case in
point is the invasion of aggressive carriers of a brain-​thirsty disease into Jane
Austen’s prim England in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Unquestionably,
readers have to contribute to the process of bringing fiction to life, not only by
filling gaps, but also in recognizing intertextuality and in the transformation
of the words on the page into images, persons and coherent action. In fantasy,
counter-intuitive elements will occasionally require some ‘willing suspension
of disbelief.’ Mashup fiction like this augmentation of a beloved classic, as
Kathryn Duncan demonstrates, tests how much the envelope can be stretched.
The beloved Bennett sisters now practice Asian martial arts for survival in an
ecology infested by the recently fashionable monsters. Once brought to life,
why not let a fiction continue to wax, adapt, and reflect our hidden desires
and fears?

The Evolved Mind

Cognitive studies increasingly demonstrate how other evolved mental func-

tions, besides ToM, shape our response to art and literature. But this is also a
18  Cooke and Vanderbeke

two-​way street: employing concepts of “cognitive distribution,” Keener demon-

strates how graphic novels ‘stretch’ our capacity for imagining, interconnect-
ing and interpreting special, temporal and thematic perspectives by challeng-
ing readers to think in new dimensions and juxtapositions. Kill Shakespeare,
a contemporary graphic novel, revives and recombines famous characters
from William Shakespeare’s plays, and Keener demonstrates how the familiar
works are latently present in the mind of the reader, ready to be triggered by
artistic imagery. This lends art enormous flexibility to speak to new cultural
­environments.
Meanwhile, as Kathryn Duncan makes clear, popular narrative regularly
makes recourse to imagery that elicits an involuntary response.9 Functions of
the autonomic system greatly predate our species; these include our capacity
for disgust and nausea. Such overpowering reactions are evolutionary adapta-
tions to avoid and, if necessary, expel likely toxins. A further consequence is
the access of the autonomic system to our memory; it establishes virtually in-
delible aversions. The example Duncan explores is mash-​up’s brain-​devouring
zombies. On the one hand, any such explanatory system will impinge on our
freedom –​with its reliance on conventional patterns of stimulus-​response, this
is especially a factor with popular narrative –​and on the other hand, we gain
a deeper, sometimes troubling, understanding of what art and literature do for
and to us.
Mashups and adaptations to some extent re-​assign canonical works to
new cultural environments, including topics like Alzheimer’s disease that are
salient to the new contexts and intended audiences. Of course, extreme de-
mentia is not addressed in Austen’s work, but one of the qualities of revisions
is that they can move from association to association, accreting new mean-
ings, spawning new and unexpected variants. It would be fallacious to sug-
gest that modern popular culture, just because it appeals to our evolutionary
heritage, is without any relevance to the times in which it is produced. All
narratives, canonical or popular, also address issues that are of imminent
importance, even if these concerns may be garbed in generic formulas and
motifs. Among the abilities our minds have evolved is the recognition of use-
ful ­information.
In addition, research on the kind of information that is most readily remem-
bered indicates that social content is recalled better than factual content (Me-
soudi, Whiten, and Dunbar). This would, of course, also suggest that in oral

9 This is not exclusive to popular narrative. Classical fiction occasionally strikes below the
belt –​think of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tristram Shandy, The Brothers Karamazov or Ma-
dame Bovary.
Introduction 19

cultures factual information would be mentally stored and retained better if

it was encoded in a story with social content. We will see similar retention of
topographical information in the tales covered in Michelle Scalise Sugiyama’s
contribution. She argues that we tell and enjoy stories partly because their in-
formation is relevant to our lives, including our immediate situation and con-
ditions. In forager societies, such as Scalise Sugiyama studies, stories encode
highly useful information about environment and the territory. Our ability to
recognize and process relevant information, such as landmarks, certainly con-
tributes to survival skills and has left its mark on our stories and literary inter-
ests. This, of course, requires that storytellers be informed about the real-​life
counterparts of their subjects –​a point thoroughly demonstrated by Saunders’
overview of detective stories. Fictions can be regarded as vehicles for accurate,
or at least well-​faked, information, possibly more likely to be utilized than ac-
tual travel guides, memoirs, or formal culturological statements. Contempo-
rary bedtime stories, however, have quite a different rationale, and the process
of story-​telling as such may be more important than the actual content of the
tales. The necessity to vanquish infant sleep resistance, a phenomenon deriv-
ing from mother infant separation in modern sleep environments, requires
strategies to soothe feelings of abandonment and lurking dangers. The bed-
time story simulates communal story telling; moreover, many of these stories
are, actually, about falling asleep, while others turn traditional predators like
bears, tigers, or alligators into cuddly companions that need not be feared.
In adult and already in juvenile fiction, however, pure fantasy is rare.
One indication may be the minimally counterintuitive imagery Tom Dolack
scans: what draws our attention and makes stories memorable are slight mod-
ifications of the world and its inhabitants as we know them. According to this
line of reasoning, supernatural beings, who deviate more radically from the
physics, biology, and psychology we share, presumably would not be as rele-
vant and thus as interesting to us. It is, however, open to question how overt and
intentional this transmission of adaptively relevant information is. Much of
the topographical detail conveyed in the oral tales Scalise Sugiyama describes
appears to be imparted in passing, not as the consciously intended subject of
narration, but rather as casual material that the listener assimilates passively,
probably without taking conscious notice. Art in this sense constructs for us a
physics, a psychology, a moral system, and, per this case, also a geography that
we infer smoothly, in a self-​motivating fashion: somehow or other, it is imbibed
with pleasure and interest.
Attempts to generalize about popular narrative and culture face daunt-
ing obstacles, given only the sheer multitude and variety of their media,
genres, and cultural influences. Yet these same qualities bespeak the powerful
20  Cooke and Vanderbeke

psychological forces generating all of this cultural richness. Their very popu-
larity is indicative of their ability to touch human instincts and desires. And, as
the chapters in this volume demonstrate, beneath the variety of culturally and
historically contingent genres, modes, narrative strategies or motifs, we can
detect universal patterns of human nature for which evolutionary criticism
provides adequate explanatory models and theories.

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