/lit/ - Literature

hmm, this literary Darwinism reminds me of Nietzsche's "Homer's Contest" where he talks about how ancient Greek literature was related to the Greeks' environment and social/political circumstances.
Excerpt:
"But what do we behold when, no longer led and protected by Homer, we stride back into the pre-Homeric world? Only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible. What kind of earthly existence do these revolting, terrible theogonic myths reflect? A life ruled only by the children of Night: strife, lust, deceit, old age, and death."

He explains in that essay how Greek literature was related to the Greeks' innate aggression and desire for triumph.
"Why must the Greek sculptor give form again and again to war and combat in innumerable repetitions: distended human bodies, their sinews tense with hatred or with the arrogance of triumph; writhing bodies, wounded; dying bodies, expiring? Why did the whole Greek world exult over the combat scenes of the Iliad? I fear that we do not understand these in a sufficiently "Greek" manner; indeed, that we should shudder if we were ever to understand them "in Greek".

>And Thus Spake Zarathustra is awesome.

*blush*