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Leonard Moss,
The Evolutionary
Sequence in Tragedy and the Bible
Of the many
available books that celebrate the Bible, Shakespeare, and
Charles Darwin,
The
Evolutionary Sequence
is the first study to show their continuity.
The technical details of literary practice—narrative
patterns, sentence constructions, and metaphorical
designs—project a paradox informing natural selection. In
order to flourish, both nature’s organisms and
civilization’s actors require stability; at crucial times
they also require flexibility. They must preserve existing
bonds or boundaries and simultaneously adjust to
environmental and social stress. The welfare of a species,
or a character representing some traditional mode of
conduct, depends on the resolution of a contest between
constancy and deviation.
Moss shows how
Darwin’s observations in
The Origin of
Species
on natural variation, adaptation, and selection are relevant
to the unfolding of ethical and religious values in dramatic
and biblical landmarks, such as The Hebrew Torah and the
Books of Ecclesiastes, Job, and Matthew, as well as plays by
Shakespeare, O’Neill, and Beckett, that display an
evolutionary sequence shaping belief systems as well as
organic structures.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1.
The Evolutionary Sequence
Chapter 2.
The Darwinian Covenant
Chapter 3.
Two Hebrew Skeptics
Chapter 4.
Jesus the Adapter
Chapter 5.
The Tragic Impasse: Shakespearean Constancy and Deviation
Chapter 6.
Darwin’s Paradox and O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night
Chapter 7.
Waiting for
Godot:
The End of Evolution?
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Introduction
Intellectual activity, like
organic life, is nothing if not ironic—ironic,
unpredictable, and volatile. We live in an age of incredible
scientific achievement, yet scientists are still engaged
with humanists and fundamentalists in feuds that began
centuries ago. Plato attributed a “long-standing”
competition between philosophers and poets to the
aggravating fact that their languages were so unlike; for
the same reason, scientists are now at odds with religious
thinkers and creative writers. But the languages spoken by
serious novelists, dramatists, theologians, and scientists
need not be considered incompatible.
On The Origin of
Species (1859) offers a guide to their common
conclusions. Darwin’s observations on natural variation,
adaptation, and selection are relevant to the unfolding of
ethical and religious values in dramatic and biblical
masterworks. Darwin’s insight can expand our understanding
of serious literature, and literary analysis will support
Darwin’s insight.
The Hebrew Torah, the Books of
Ecclesiastes, Job, and Matthew, and plays by Shakespeare,
O’Neill, and Beckett—project a paradox that shapes belief
systems as well as organic structures. In order to flourish,
both nature’s organisms and civilization’s actors require
stability; at crucial times, they also require flexibility.
They must preserve existing bonds or boundaries and at the
same time adjust to environmental and social stress. The
welfare of a species or a character representing some
traditional mode of conduct depends on the resolution of
this paradox. When challenge threatens cultural models or
animals, they both respond in a recurring sequence that
begins with a test of an inherited identity, opens out to a
Darwinian contest between constancy and deviation, and
climaxes in reiteration, vacillation, or integration
(adaptation).
Tragic and biblical figures swing between permanence and
anarchy, between continuity and divergence. On one hand,
they resist change by glorifying traditional beliefs; on the
other hand, they lack emotional restraint. Their intense
feelings, physical appetites, and personal ambitions often
conflict with their dedication to abstract standards or an
immortal presence. Unfortunately for the long-term prospects
of humanity, the antagonism they bring about between
invariable cultural order and fluctuating organic functions
unbalances the evolutionary movement toward adaptation.
Authority becomes worshiped as the haven of security, or at
the other extreme, natural variability is indulged in an
inferno of instability. Reconciliation, typically
enforceable only by supernatural intervention, becomes
difficult to achieve and easy to upset—when the extremes of
stasis and flux exclude each other. Disunity can be
terminal, its consequences providing material for tragic
history and drama.
Evidence for this polarity will
be sought not in specific allusions to Darwin’s terms by
characters in the tales but rather in implications
transmitted by the techniques of storytelling. Literary
tools—narrative format, sentence construction, and
metaphorical design—translate a disorderly organic process
into an orderly challenge-response progression enacted by
characters who seek constancy but are inconsistent,
self-centered, and violent. That progression can structure
religious chronicles as well as secular tales because human
actors struggle to ensure a practical balance between
stability and change in
all their relationships,
spiritual as well as ethical and physical. Surprisingly,
biblical works evoke a pattern of challenge and reaction
entirely consonant with the natural sequence.
Theoretical compatibility, of
course, does not guarantee practical feasibility, so I
disclaim any advocacy of particular religious doctrines or
institutions. I write neither to promote nor disparage
biblical literature but to show its fidelity to the
evolutionary process; exploring that fidelity seems far more
profitable than dwelling on the differences. “Any one whose
disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained
difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of
facts will certainly reject [my] theory,” Darwin wrote in
the Origin (452). There is so much to be gained when
we listen to what can be explained.
Author
Leonard Moss
is professor emeritus of comparative literature at the State
University of New York at Geneseo. He has served as editor
of the journal of the Rhode Island Jewish Historical
Association in Providence, and as Fulbright Professor of
American Literature at the University of Athens and the
Foreign Studies University in Beijing. Previous publications
include
Arthur Miller:
The
Excess of Heroism in Tragic Drama;
and a memoir,
China Was
Paradise! China Was Hell!
He is presently hard at work on the literary techniques of
Joseph Conrad.
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