“Just as Charles Darwin studied animals to discover the patterns behind their development, Literary Darwinists read books in search of innate patterns of human behavior: child bearing and rearing, efforts to acquire resources (money, property, influence) and competition and cooperation within families and communities. They say that it’s
impossible to fully appreciate and understand a literary text unless you keep in mind that humans behave in certain universal ways and do so because those behaviors are hard-wired into us. For them, the most effective and truest works of literature are those that reference or exemplify these basic facts.”
(New York Times Magazine)
Although this turns out to be about something more proasic, upon seeing the title I thought the Times Magazine was proclaiming the overthrow of the theory that literary works are ‘intelligently designed.’ But, oh, postmodernism has already dismantled that notion, I guess.