Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

cevans's picture

I think that what I took the

I think that what I took the most from the discussion of evolution is the way humanity imposes its own concepts on things that it discovers. It is the tendency of humanity to anthropomorphize animals and also to turn narrative stories into non narratives especially in the age of print where we can fix our words in a concrete form on a page instead of an ever changing oral tradition. I tend to think of literature as being much more narrative then science because it is open to many interpretations and re-imaginings. What I wonder though is whether we have forced our literature into a more non-narrative state by printing it. Do books themselves limit our literature? No matter how many times you reinterpret a story you have read the words still remain the same and although you can always rewrite and reprint a story it is still being forced into a solid form. The author in the first reading we had to do for this class said he had the perfect novel in his mind but that it fell short when it was placed on the page. Was this because his own skills or abilities were lacking or because by placing the story on the page he was forcing the narrative into the non-narrative?

Reply

To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
4 + 5 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.