On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (review)

One would think there might be some mention of folktales, myths, legends, and other short traditional narratives in a book dedicated to explaining how and why stories originated. One would think literary fairy tales might receive a few words as well. But one had better shed such expectations before reading On the Origin of Stories. Brian Boyd's study, based on Darwinist theory, provides few historical clues to explain how types of tales originated and developed. Instead, he is more interested in writing a bible for the propagation of evolutionary psychological principles to grasp our natural inclination for narrative. Though he proclaims to be scientific and tolerant of other approaches to art and literature, a promoter of E. O. Wilson's consilience theory, he denounces current theoretical approaches to culture and literature and spins hypothetical and often unfounded notions about the origins and appeal of stories in the name of "evocriticism," his coined term for evolutionary criticism, which he wants to validate in this book. Moreover, his misinformed tirades against "Theory"—his amorphous term for what he considers the pestilent abstruse thought (lumping together Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and other critical theorists) that has infected the academy—run through his book, making it difficult for anyone who might be sympathetic to evolutionary psychology and anthropology to appreciate some of his unusual "materialist" insights that can help us understand why stories are so invaluable in human evolution and why they command our attention.

Though disturbed by many of the inadequacies and contradictions of Boyd's book, I would like to sort out some of his more valid ideas about evolutionary psychology and Darwinism that could be helpful and applicable in the study of folk and fairy tales. (Indeed, it is important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.) But before I do this, I want to summarize the main arguments of Boyd's book so that there is some context for understanding how his project—to rescue the agency of the storyteller/author as a member of the evolving human species, and thus to rescue the humanities from itself—might bear some fruit.

Boyd divides On the Origin of Stories into two books with five parts. The first book consists of three parts that deal with evolution in relation to nature, art, and fiction. The second book has two parts in which Boyd applies his theoretical principles to interpret Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey and Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! From the outset, he states that he has two main aims: "first, to offer an account of fiction (and of art in general) that takes our widest context for explaining life, evolution; and to offer a way beyond the error of thought and practice in much modern academic literary study, which over the last few decades has often stifled—and has even sought to stifle—the pleasure, the life, and the art of literature" (11). These are huge claims and grave accusations, and it takes a great deal of hubris and/or ingenuousness to make them.

Boyd's major thesis in the first book is that since humans all share the same genetic wiring and evolved brain formation that enable them to adapt effectively to their environments, they have developed universal concerns manifested in all forms of art. Adaptation is necessary for reproduction and survival, and for Boyd, as humans adapted to the environment and the brain grew and became more complex, it developed neural systems and modules that enabled it to process information faster and with less effort. The honing of the mind made humans more disposed to selecting fitter partners, cooperating with one another more effectively, forming norms and regulations that furthered fitness and survival, and creating patterns and designs that provided knowledge and security. In short, nature generated culture; and art, though often considered useless, can best be explained by understanding how it has become ingrained in the psyche of the species...