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some views of literature have been put forth that i disagree with. take an excerpt from a week 2 post:

"Also take an author. An author begins to write and write and write. His first draft is rarely what is published. The piece requires countless hours of editing and revision. The piece is constantly evolving into a publishable master piece."

I think this is not a sensible way to describe evolution in regards to literature. in class we've studied that evolution is non-teleological (and this is where social darwinism gets it wrong, besides the bigotry and everything...) -- it eliminates some of the traits that don't work as well, but the "best" don't survive, simply the species that work. it shouldn't really be called "the survival of the fittest" i think it's "the survival of the fitter,"  or, best of all, "the survival of the adequately fit."

evolution does not have the creation of a master race as a goal. homo sapiens happened to evolve because of complex brain functions that prevented it from dying, not because it was meant to be the most sophisticated thing on earth. however, the poster's view of literature in the above excerpt is dreadfully teleological. she sees evolution in literature as a goal to perfection or to a "masterpiece." in this case, the writer has an idea in mind and works to get to that. this is exactly what scientific evolution is not.

a better way of thinking of evolution in literature is of the history of literature. certain themes and forms have persisted, others have not, because of changes in our society that have occurred gradually. there is nothing teleological here; people change over time. there is also no improvement here, as there is in scientific evolution, but it is not fair to see present literature as superior to past literature; the genre as a whole certainly does not evolve, and that is why the above poster wanted to talk about literary evolution in terms of one novel, not in terms of the history of the novel. a novel "evolves" in the figurative sense of the word, and this sense is wrong scientifically. we talk about how people "evolve." since this is so misleading for understanding science, we should stop right away and use more accurate words. we should say instead that people "mature" or that novels "blossom" or "progress."