Hypotheses About Formal Literary Features
Some Darwinists have proposed explanations for formal literary features, including genres. Poetic meter has been attributed to a biologically based three-second metric. Gender preferences for pornography and romance novels have been explained by sexual selection. Different genres have been conjectured to correspond to different basic emotions: tragedy corresponding to sadness, fear, and anger; comedy to joy and surprise; and satire to anger, disgust, and contempt. Tragedy has also been associated with status conflict and comedy with mate selection. The satiric dystopian novel has been explained by contrasting universal human needs and oppressive state organization.
Read more about this topic: Darwinian Literary Studies
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