Literary Proto‐Humans

Abstract

Scholars working in different areas of literary studies have recently developed an interest in how literature deals with the ‘deep’, evolutionary history of humankind. Cross‐fertilizing this line of enquiry with accounts of consciousness representation in cognitive narrative theory, my essay explores literary figurations of prehistoric mentalities and their interpretive ramifications. Through two case studies, Jack London's Before Adam (1906) and William Golding's The Inheritors (1955), I examine how fictional texts may convey the difference between modern‐day cognition and the psychological life of our hominid ancestors. By investigating the narrative strategies employed by London (first‐person narration, embedded narrative) and Golding (internal focalization), I advance hypotheses about how such devices may guide readers’ engagements with the two novellas’ protagonists and shape their interpretations. I argue that, while London renders the cognitive specificity of proto‐humans in purely negative terms – that is, by subtracting capacities that we tend to associate with Homo sapiens – Golding stages a complex trade‐off between archaic and modern mentalities. In different ways, both London's and Golding's novellas can prompt reflection on the cognitive evolution of the Homo genus, potentially involving readers in the challenges of thinking about evolutionary phenomena.