Zachary Norwood, Valparaiso University

 

“To suggest that there are no universals—that they are flatus vocis—is to endanger our uniqueness.” —Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 43)

 

The term “literary universals,” when not properly understood, can sound pejorative and theoretically dubious: whatever could be universal about literature, one of the most—if not the most—broad, varied, and historically contingent artistic modes of expression? And for that matter, whatever could be “universal” about anything, let alone a literary work? Philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars—and more recently, neuroscientists, such as Lisa Feldman Barrett (“Are Emotions Natural Kinds?”)—routinely contest the very idea of universality, the idea that there could be an all-encompassing category of properties with common features (see Pap). Against the grain of such anti-universalist sentiments, I should like to address in this essay, first, contentions over the status of literary universals and universals in general and, second, in broad-brush fashion, propose possible candidates for universals themselves. For the first part of this essay, I shall entertain serious-minded theorists’ rejection of “universality,” with the aim of preserving the term’s rightful place in literary criticism and theory; for the second, I shall consider what literary universals—correctly understood—amount to, pragmatically, for literary theorists and critics; last, I shall tersely review possible problems posed by topics covered in previous sections, with an eye to future research.

 

I.

How one considers “universality,” philosophically, hinges on the nature of properties, namely, attributes (be they physical, mental, aesthetic, non-aesthetic, or some admixture) that assume some reliable, substantive form. According to J. P. Moreland, analytic philosophers usually fall within three major schools of thought regarding the nature of properties: extreme nominalism (properties in general do not exist), nominalism (properties exist but can only be particulars, not universals), and realism (mind-independent properties exist in the world and are universals) (325). Nominalists of various stripes have led the most cogent charge against universality; on their view, universal denotata for terms such as “red” or “sex” (for example) do not exist in the world, only family resemblances for redness and sex; terms such as “red” and “sex” only serve to delude us into believing that redness and sex, as universal kinds of properties, exist; but they do not, from a nominalist standpoint; only particular types of sense-data exist, in perceptual form, and percepts vary across species and cultures (326). Many literary theorists, most notably Derrida, have taken up the extreme nominalist position. Rather than merely contest the relationship between language and what we might believe exists in the world, for Derrida language is all-encompassing: there is nothing even resembling mind-independent universals in the world; there is only language and various collective points of view conditioned by linguistic frameworks (Rorty “The Higher Nominalism”).

Consistent with the Literary Universals project, I shall adopt a realist stance; in particular, I shall adopt a stance known as “indirect realism,” that is, the belief that objective, universal properties exist in the world but that some such properties—aesthetic ones in particular—are mind-dependentuniversals(Levinson “Being Realistic”).

Evaluating a literary work depends, first, on mind-independentdescriptions of the work’s properties; we assess a critic’s (putatively “objective”) grasp on what happened, how it happened, and the language used to evoke a sense of what happened; second, evaluating literature involves some mind-dependentpsychological appraisal (such as viewing a work as “unrealistic,” “silly,” or “sublime”). According to Rorty, Derrida, and others, however, evaluative claims about literary works lack “unities of structure” (and, one would presume, a universal substrate upon which to base such a claim) (Rorty “The Higher Nominalism” 464); on this view, a critic’s aesthetic judgement is relative to her assessment within a particular time, historical context, and interpretive community; if values are relative in this way, then aesthetic judgements cannot possibly be universal, given the raw, individual nature of reader-response; as I shall argue, however, evaluative judgements do have a universal basis (they not only do but must, if any work of art can be said to be more valuable than another; the whole enterprise of literary evaluation, in fact, may hinge on universal categories of valuation).

Realists, for their part, have responded to the nominalist critique of universals by showing how actual, measurable, mind-independent properties do exist, properties that warrant classification as universals or “natural kinds,” that is, objective attributes that persist in some substantive form, no matter how we might think about or respond to them (Richard Boyd and Moreland). Neuroscientists and philosophers have also taken pains to show how natural kind categories are not dogmatically universal, in some strong objectivist sense but, rather, “homeostatic property clusters,” or HPCs (Richard Boyd; Eickers et al.; Panksepp; Scarantino “Core Affect”). An HPC is not an inflexible, Platonic ideal demarcating some essential substance; rather, an HPC designates a set of properties that persist in the world, over time, that have reliable, measurable, behavioral effects (Scarantino “Core Affect” 950). An obvious example of an HPC would be the human heart, whose structure and function are clearly persistent over time, even if (in evolutionary time) the heart has been modified by natural, selective pressures as well as a host of man-made pressures, such as high-cholesterol diets. A less obvious example of an HPC would be the amygdala, whose structure and function has persisted over evolutionary time for millions of years: “Even non-mammalian species such as reptiles, birds, and fish have an amygdala-like brain region with similar circuits and functions to the amygdala in mammals” (Janak and Tye 284); the amygdala—despite its inter-species variability—can be seen as a “natural kind” of persistent structure, with reliable, measurable effects on human behavior. This is not to say that the amygdala is a “modular” structure whose functionality is cut-off from other neurological systems; on the contrary, the amygdala functions in concert with several other systems in the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and sensory association areas (284); what matters, in this case, is that the amygdala is a structure whose functional specialization persists, cross-culturally; the amygdala is a cluster of neurological properties (types of neurons and neuropeptides) with a predictable and measurable impact on reader-response. An HPC, then, can designate anything, from a discrete biological system, non-aesthetic properties underlying aesthetic concepts (e.g., a kind of controlled, delicate movement that distinguishes, say, “graceful” from “jarring”), or something as ubiquitous and persistent as carbon, gravity, and other non-biological kinds of properties.

So although human nature may best be described as an “ensemble of social relations,” to echo Marx, it remains the case that underpinning those relations are biologically preorganized structures in the mind-brain, most notably (for literary works) structures governing social cognition and emotion. Neuroscientists stress, moreover, that if there were no cross-cultural, functionally specialized neural architectures subsuming social cognition and emotion—if there were no neuropsychological HPCs, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex—then cultural diversity would not be possible (Colombetti “The Feeling Body”; de Waal and Ferrari; Hamann; Panksepp; Scarantino and Griffiths). To clarify with an analogy: just as the game of chess is played using a variety of culturally circumscribed openings and defenses—the English opening, Budapest gambit, Dutch defense, and so forth—yet the rules of chess (and functionality of each piece) remain persistent, across cultures, it is also true that without preorganized, neurobiological structures in the mind-brain, without memory and emotional circuitry able to represent, encode, and respond characteristically to a variety of sensory impressions, there would be no means (no substrate within which) to store and express a cultural norm in the first place. The same has been said about universality in the arts. Literary theorists have long championed the centrality of universals, most notably E. D. Hirsch, Jr. (Hirsch “Literary Evaluation”; “Objective Interpretation”). And more recently, philosophers of art, such as Dennis Dutton and Noël Carroll, have written persuasively about how artistic value, while certainly modulated by cultural and linguistic norms, is nevertheless constrained by evolutionary universals (Noël Carroll; Dutton). The “vast realm of cultural constructions,” writes Dutton, “is created by a mind whose underlying interests, preferences, and capacities are products of human prehistory” (206). Even so, “literary universals,” as a theoretical term, appears suspect to many theorists who might otherwise agree that something like an HPC exists; most would demur to the idea that “we all respond the same way” to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, yet less problematic (even to a nominalist) would be the claim that preorganized structures in the mind-brain (such as the amygdala) constrain whatever anyone anywhere would find valuable in Hamlet.

 

Misconception one: naïve uniformity

This brings me to common misconceptions of “universality.” Literary universals imply, to some, that there is a kind of collectively shared response to a particular work (such as Hamlet)over time; this assumption is misguided, however. Barbara Herrnstein Smith rightly challenges naïve universalism of this sort in her classic essay, Fixed Marks and Variable Contingencies; she argues that readers’ values, such as for Shakespeare’s sonnets, change over time depending on their life circumstances. Nevertheless, Smith would not claim that a sonnet on love is ever read as a sonnet on hate, or that the words “love is not love / Which alters when alteration finds” are scanned as “we no longer love someone after having an affair” or, for that matter, that “love is something that changes after undergoing some personal change.” On the contrary, we read and value the sonnets with generally consistent understanding, which suggests that something universal—about the sonnets and ourselves in relation to them—organizes our reception of and values for Shakespeare’s sonnets over time (see Easterlin). Alas, literary movements—and academic careers, for that matter—routinely revolve around denying universalism altogether, going so far as to claim that there is no shared response to anything, only culturally contingent interpretations (Bohannan; Stanley Fish Is There; Smith Contingencies of Value).

Even a few neuroscientists seem to have taken up the anti-universalist banner. Lisa Feldman Barrett, informed by her having taught a course on the eugenics movement and its “scientific justification for racism,” early in her career, rightfully finds any kind of essentialist theory of emotion dubious (“When Is Speech Violence?”). Barrett has made anti-universalism a staple in her social constructivist theory of emotion, perhaps from the same moral skepticism that compelled her to reject eugenics (“Are Emotions Natural Kinds?”). She argues, in nominalist fashion, that “not all mental states belonging to a particular category named by an emotion word such as ‘fear’ look alike, feel alike, or have the same neurophysiological signature from one instance to another,” listing in support of this argument many documented differences in fear-expression (“Variety Is the Spice of Life” 2). The argument is nominalist in spirit insofar as she believes that there is no universal property for “fear” in the brain, only perceived family resemblances for a type of response, such as fear-like behavior that we categorize, misleadingly, with universal terms. Barrett argues that our semantic sense for terms such as “fear” and “love” deceive us into believing that there is some fixed, corresponding referential domain for each category of experience; however, as she contends, emotion terms “do not name mechanisms” in the brain—“fear” is a loose, ambiguous term whose corresponding affective states can vary and involve a whole host of different brain circuitries; words for emotions such as “fear” and “love,” on this view, only designate brain states that recur enough to warrant naming them (8). When anyone reads “love is not love / Which alters when alteration finds,” what is meant by “love,” for each reader, is not anchored in neurological systems dedicated to “love,” in itself, for “love” on Barrett’s view is not a neurological mechanism but an ensemble of complex social relations, sensory impressions, thoughts, moments—“love” is a social construct, not a brain state.

Many have critiqued Barrett’s theory of emotion, in depth (most promisingly, in my mind, Giovanna Colombetti, Andrea Scarantino, and Jaak Panksepp), and while aspects of Barrett’s theory certainly hold merit, I believe her stronger claims—consistent with most nominalist critiques of universalism—rest on a simple, informal logical mistake, namely, a category error. In her critique of emotional natural kinds, Barrett confuses the wholephenomenology of emotion—all its complex expressive variations—withpartsof the brain whose properties reputedly evolved to express emotions, such as the amygdaloid complex. Emotion categories such as fear are “social artifacts,” according to Barrett, that can refer to an infinite number of possible triggering stimuli—there is fear of spiders, fear of clowns, fear of disorderly conduct, fear of getting wet, and so forth; and since the object of an emotional response is constitutive of one’s phenomenological sense of feeling an emotion (spider-fear is surely different from wetness-fear), there cannot be anything “biologically basic” about an emotional category that underpins every instance of its application (Barrett “Variety is the Spice of Life” 4). However, just as it would be a confusion to claim that “water” has no universal properties, because (as we readily observe) there are “watery basements,” “rainy days,” “recreational swimming pools,” and “igloos,” it would be a mistake to say that discrete neural networks (dedicated to processing and expressing “fear”) do not exist in the brain, simply because (as we also readily observe) there are “fearful movies,” “agoraphobic episodes,” “fear of ghosts,” and so forth.

Against category errors of this nature, a far more parsimonious claim would be, simply, that underlying universal properties—“water-properties” and “fear-properties”—structure particular instances of water and fear expressions, constraining whatever meanings we may attribute to types of water and fear. Social constructive elements certainly modulate emotions: I cannot fear a ghost unless I have been indoctrinated with a belief in ghosts, first. However, what binds all emotional semantic categories together, across-cultures, are neurobiological substrata in our mind-brains that facilitate emotional expressions, generally. Even if, say, a particular area in the amygdala dedicated to processing fearful stimuli (let us call it area X) did not activate across all instances of fear, there would be no reason to claim that X is no longer a natural kind of property cluster, namely, a set of functionally specialized neural mechanisms that process types of fearful stimuli (see Scarantino “Functional”).

Put another way, if a universal psychological system—such as one dedicated to processing disgust—is also involved in processing other kinds of affective responses, such as moral repugnance, then that system cannot be said to lack functional specialization fora particular, natural kind of emotion. And most recent neuroscientific reviews on kinds of emotion bear this argument out: while there certainly are complex, overlapping mechanisms for processing different types of fear—some reflexive, some deliberative—there are, nevertheless, doubly-differentiated and genetically differentiated systems dedicated to fear in the brain (Adolphs, Gross and Canteras, Herry and Johansen, Tovote et al.). (Such differentiation is a neuroscience method where functional specialization is determined by showing that independent variables, such as fearful stimuli, trigger discrete anatomical activation but not confounding variables, such as joyful stimuli.) The same could be said for other kinds of emotions, such as disgust, and, yes, even love.

One lesson that could be had from neuroscientific research on emotion, for the Literary Universals Project, is that whatever we might call a “universal” in “literary universals”—such as a universal kind of emotional response—is not undone by the varying ways we emote to literary works, moment by moment; rather, what is “universal” in a literary universal ought to be located in the shared kinds of ways we appreciate particular works of art, at the level of human nature (Brian Boyd On the Origin of Stories; Joseph Carroll “Poststructuralism, Cultural Constructivism and Evolutionary Biology”; Noël Carroll “Art and Human Nature”; Dutton “The Art Instinct”). Patrick Colm Hogan elaborates on this lesson in one of his recent books, Beauty and Sublimity. On his view, “aesthetic universals” (literary depictions of prototypical experiences, such as romantic attachment) “are not only compatible with” differences in taste “but actually entail them” (48). We might say, by analogy, that because all humans share a visual system allowing us to perceive and represent the world, variously, “vision” remains a universalkind of perceptual category; visual systems in the brain form physiological substrata intrinsic to humankind (even blind individuals use a visual system to represent objects and events, non-visually); yet we would not say that because visual systems represent an infinite variety of stimuli, that this fact is at odds with vision’s dependency on evolved HPCs. On the contrary, that we all share a visual system in kinddoes not entail uniformity in representational function, in particular. It is not then a stretch to claim, by extension, that whatever is particular about literary experience is also contingent on universally shared aesthetic sensibilities, what Hume once called “standards of taste” that we have all more or less inherited from human nature.

 

Misconception two: naïve objectivism

A second challenge to the Literary Universals Project runs thus: even if there were universal kinds of HPC underlying specific types of reading experience, where exactly would they reside? Would they be textual, psychological, biological, perceptual? If there is no invariant substrate in the mind (or in literary works) that, say, is shown to be active for all of us when responding to the death of Romeo and Juliet, then there is nothing foundational upon which to warrant claims of literary universality.

To be sure, the act of reading and comprehending a text, as Stanley Fish has argued, is not about what texts “do” to us, as mind-independent objective artifacts, but what we “do” to texts, as subjectively engrossed readers (“Literature in the Reader”). Language comprehension is a process of decoding objective properties on the page (textual symbols) into subjective responses (mental representations and affective sensations); insofar as readers must construct meaning from symbols, and insofar as that meaning is conceptual and affective (something that occurs within our minds and bodies), it would seem (as Fish contends) that all reading comprehension is interpretive and radically subjectivist, making any kind of “objectivism” (which literary universals entail) impossible (Stanley Fish Is There a Text in This Class?;  “Literature in the Reader”; The Trouble with Principle). Even the most straightforward sentence, such as “the dog barked,” is not meaningful as text, in itself; the meaning of “the dog barked” is a byproduct of translating symbols into encoded sense impressions (memory engrams) for dogs and barking (Barsalou “Grounded Cognition”; Caramazza et al.; Zwaan and Madden). We thus interpret“the dog barked,” in a technical neurocognitive sense, that is, the meaning of “the dog barked” resides not on the page but in our heads, and for the simple reason that each of us has acquired different memories for dogs and barking, our representational sense of “the dog barked” will vary between readers. Reading comprehension, in this respect, is both embodied and, to some considerable extent, subjective (Barsalou “Grounded Cognition”).

As Lawrence Barsalou’s research has shown, however, we all (more or less) share prototypicalrepresentational engrams (for dogs and barking and whatever else), engrams that share properties across individuals (“Grounding Conceptual Knowledge in Modality Specific Systems”); if this were not so, it would be impossible to understand, reliably, anything written (see Easterlin “Making Knowledge”). Fish’s definition of “interpretation,” by contrast, requires all meaning to be radically group-minded, for he believes that individuals cannot share meaning across readership communities; rather, each “interpretive community” dictates how readers respond to and value texts (Is There a Text in This Class?). Fish’s community-oriented theory of reader-response is empirically underdetermined, however. Community affiliation structures some reception to literary works, to be sure, yet Barsalou’s theory of knowledge puts paid to Fish’s theory, for if all knowledge is acquired from experience (even abstract knowledge, on Barsalou’s theory, is contingent on a concrete perceptual bedrock of memory impressions), then meaning is always constrained by shared, prototypical knowledge of objects and events in the world (Barsalou “Perceptual Symbol Systems”; “Grounding Conceptual Knowledge”; Goldstone et al.). Literary universals must, on this view, rest on epistemological substrates that are stable enough, across individuals, to warrant claims of universality. Epistemological substrata organize around universal systems in the mind-brain. Literary universals, thus, can be better understood as mind-dependently objective, that is, as classifiable kinds of interactions between real (observable, measurable) physical structures in our minds, textual forms, and how we respond to them.

If the above view (what Barsalou calls “grounded cognition”) is correct, literary universals are emergent aesthetic properties, a position developed most extensively by Jerrold Levinson (what he calls “emergentism”) and, more broadly, a philosophically rigorous position known as “indirect realism” (Levinson “Aesthetic Supervienience”; Ward “Direct and Indirect Realism”). For those who find the term “literary universals” suspect on the grounds that universality necessitates stable, mind-independentobjects of comprehension, emergentism offers a strong theoretical (and from the standpoint of neuropsychology, empirical) justification for universal—not uniformly received—kinds of responses and narrative structures. Literary universals are demarcated not by the moment-by-moment state-space of reception but by homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) of various kinds, such as recurring emotional responses (fear, love, jealousy); cognitive universals, such as the limitations of short-term memory, theory-of-mind, the influence of attention on memory; as well as narrative universals (recurring literary motifs, tropes, themes, and the like). There is no single place a literary universal resides; rather, literary universals (like most kinds of universality) emergefrom particular minds, texts, and social norms.

 

II.

Emotion and literary universals

So far, I have argued that literary universals are contingent, first, on shared cognitive and perceptual systems that allow us to detect and respond to works containing rewarding or punishing aesthetic experiences; both rewarding and punishing kinds of reading experience form a solid bedrock upon which claims of universal value can rest. What you find rewarding or punishing may differ, significantly, from what I find rewarding or punishing, as Hogan details in his works (Beauty and Sublimity; The Mind and Its Stories; What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion); however, interpretive variance does not militate against our ability to classify and make use of literary universals. Nor does a plurality of interpretations serve as evidence for the impossibility for reliable standards of judgment for works of art, as Stephen Davies, Brian Boyd, David Bordwell, Denis Dutton, and many others have argued (Brian Boyd Why Lyrics Last; Davies The Philosophy of Art;  “Relativism in Interpretation”; Dutton). Cross-cultural criticism, for that matter, would not be possible without identifying shared domains of representation. Hogan’s work on universal narrative types follows in this tradition, his comparative analysis of Sappho, Li Qingzhao, and Shakespeare’s treatment of romantic love being the most illustrative, in this context (What Literature Teaches Us About Emotion). Absent of stifling reductionism in his treatment of romantic love, Hogan offers a nuanced account of divergent reception, between readers, as well as how cultural norms inflect universal kinds of emotional content.

Second, I have argued that literary universals (of any kind, be they cognitive or non-cognitive) are emergentfrom objective yet mind-dependent properties. Emergentism conjoins textual, psychological, and social properties, together, in the making of an aesthetic impression and value; an interactionist approach to reader-response, on my account, is compatible with universal kinds of substrate in the mind-brain and likely also at the level of textual forms (again, without any recourse to strong objectivist or essentialist claims about human nature). Both positions, taken together—grounded cognition and emergentism—dissolve charges of naïve realism, absolutism, reductionism, and scientism when appealing to literary universals.

Now I should like to offer three examples of literary universals themselves, within the context of common misconceptions about what “literary universals” entail, as a term: emotional, empathetic, and evaluative kinds of universals.

First, perhaps the strongest candidate for a literary universal (neurobiological substrate) is emotional kinds of response. There has been extensive debate in neuroscience literature on whether emotions can be seen as natural kinds of evolved structures or as socially relative phenomena (Barrett et al.; LeDoux “Rethinking the Emotional Brain”; Panksepp). As I have suggested, anti-universalists in this debate draw on nominalist arguments against the possibility of properties with shared structures in the world (or mind-body); either this, or it is thought that interactions between minds, texts, and cultural norms are so complex and varied over time that it makes no sense to appeal to anything universal about the reading experience (Smith Contingencies of Value). Emotions, on my argument, are founded on homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) in the mind-brain, such as preorganized neural architecture dedicated to processing fear, pain, love, desire, injustice, and so forth.

Evidence for “natural kinds” of emotions, or psychological HPCs in the mind-brain, is overwhelming. One need only venture into Nature Reviews Neuroscience search database—the most prominent journal that publishes work on emotion—to discover the many recent review articles on topics as diverse as non-conscious emotional circuitry, negative affect (such as pain), empathy, music-evoked emotions, social emotions, and so forth. Each review article details empirical findings over the past ten or more years (often decades) on the target subject, and in all such reviews, emotional expression is shown to depend on functionally specialized neural architectures in the brain (Damasio and Carvalho; Janak and Tye; Ruff and Fehr; Tovote et al.). New measurement technology—such as optogenetic stimulation of neural networks, where engineered neurochemicals activated by light are injected into discrete regions of the brain, then turned on (with inhibitory or excitatory results) by light-inducing implants—has been used to map discrete neuronal circuitry dedicated to processing emotional stimuli in structures such as the amygdala (Tovote et al.). Additional research shows how emotional systems can be activated non-consciously, by mere exposure to fearful facial expressions (Tamietto and de Gelder; Yuan et al.); if some emotional kind of stimulus triggers a response, non-consciously, then deliberative, cognitive input when exposed to an emotional kind of stimulus (a disinterested “aesthetic attitude,” for example) may be l­­­­­­­­ess formative than previously imagined when evaluating works of art (Dickie “The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude”). Whatever the case may be, if evolution did not select for dedicated, discreteemotional circuitry in the brain—the basis upon which I am resting my claims for HPCs of an emotional kind—then optogenetic mapping techniques would show no signs of discrete functional specialization; but they surely do (Hess).

Barrett, for her part, appeals to electrical stimulation research conducted at the dawn of neuroscience to support her constructivist thesis of emotion (in particular, Elliot Valenstein’s studies in 1973) (Barrett “Variety Is the Spice of Life” 3). However, these data have been shown to be flawed in both method and experimental design, for they relied on patients’ verbal feedback during a resting state rather than direct, localized measurements of neural function while performing a task, under controlled experimental conditions (Poldrack and Farah). That Barrett appeals to outmoded research to support her claims ought to cast a pall over her psychological construction theory of emotion. Indeed, the evidence is not on Barrett’s side: pick up any neuroscience textbook (such as Principles of Neural Science) and you cannot turn a page without finding research differentiating discrete neural functions, each of which can be seen as a natural kind of universal substrate in the mind-brain. The whole neuroscientific enterprise, for that matter, would lack directive if specialized systems in the brain were not reliably identified. Neuroscience has become so proficient at mapping discrete neuronal functioning, in fact, that it can enable auditory and visual perception in blind and deaf subjects (Hajioff; Nazari et al.); give monkeys the ability to move an electronic arm with mind-control (Velliste et al.); allow rats with computer aided movement implants to solve mazes faster than rats without implants (Yu et al.); and so forth. These feats are predicated on the reliable manipulation of discrete, functionally specialized systems in the brain, and emotional systems are no less reliably manipulable in this respect than other kinds of systems. Emotional kinds of representational content in literary works, and the predictable ways we respond to this content, is therefore governed by universal psychological systems.

 

Empathy and literary universals

Another candidate for a literary universal, overlapping with recurring kinds of emotional experience, is empathy. Extensive research has shown that empathy is an evolved psychological mechanism triggered by perceiving conspecific distress (see Preston and de Waal). However, insofar as literary theory is concerned, empathy ought to be viewed through a broader lens, within the scope of recognizing shared kinds of experience, knowledge, and finding literary value in empathic reward or distress. Empathy is not only sharing emotions with others and adopting their points of view; more technically, empathy activates “observers’ own distributed representations for the target and their state and situation—including related feelings, memories and associations—in a connectionist manner” (6). From an early age forward, we encode memories into coherent representations for objects and events in the world, memories that form the bedrock of our knowledge about ourselves and others (Barsalou “Grounded Cognition”). These memories underpin our conceptual representations for even the most abstract theories, and they extend into the domain of whatever we might call the “cognitive” input of reception (Yeh and Barsalou “The Situated Nature of Concepts”). Shared, basic architecture for social emotions works in conjunction with our knowledge, forming various clusters of empathic understanding, from general awareness of shared values for love, friendship, family, and so forth, to idiosyncratic preferences for, say, cosplay, Star Trek, polyamory, and other particular categories of shared identity.

Further, as I have already suggested (and argued extensively, elsewhere), literary works able to represent universal kinds of emotional experience—such as sexual jealousy or oppression—confer an intrinsic kind of value (Norwood). By “intrinsic,” I mean a kind of potentiated value within the work itself: words require translation into representational imagery, and imagery must evoke emotional response, before it can be said that “a value” has been conferred. What is notmeant by “intrinsic” is a universally shared interpretation or isomorphic impression. We cannot possibly all share the same kinds of empathic responses to literary works. Moreover, an intrinsic value, potentiated by a (more or less) shared understanding of episodic action, often evokes divergent emotional valences (such as “liking” or “disliking” a character) or interpretations (judging a work to be “good” or “bad”). Perspectivism reigns in literary interpretation, to be sure, yet underlying all divergent responses to a work, on my view, is a substrate of universal HPCs in the mind-brain. Divergent emotional valences are commonplace in literary criticism, precisely because works are written with built-in ambivalences about the moral implications of characters’ actions, as Norman Rabkin argues with reference to Shakespeare’s political plays. That literary works so often depict characters with ambivalent qualities—the treachery and sophistication of Iago, for example—likely reflects an author’s wish to represent (with fidelity) the messy domain of universal human nature in social psychology. As Christopher Boehm argues in his study of social hierarchies, “structural contradictions in our nature tend to produce profound ambivalences in humans, psychological tugs of war that are reasonably predictable because they are anchored in human nature” (231). Divergent reactions to characters likely also reflect changes in our own personal development, as readers. Interpersonal upheavals—loss or gain of a loved one, rejection or acceptance—may at times dramatically alter our perception of a work’s merits, such as finding a novel profound at a young age and mawkish at an older one. It nevertheless remains requisite for a work to represent some emotional kind of experience that readers can readily identity or sympathize with, if that work can be said to offer an intrinsically rewarding kind of experience (see Budd “Artistic Value”).

There are numerous ways in which readers can empathize (or not) with recurring kinds of universal themes, making universalist criticism expansive rather than reductive. Hogan has stipulated two types of empathic response: “categorial empathy” and “situational empathy” (The Mind and Its Stories). Categorial empathy occurs when readers share a group-identity with a work’s representations, such as sharing a sense of class or cultural identity, such as Jewishness, being a white-collar worker, and the like. “Situational empathy,” on the other hand, requires shared memories of basic or particular kinds, such as having experienced the intoxicating effects of power, romantic love, or recalling how it feels to thwart an oppressive force. Situational empathy, thus, may best account for our capacity to empathize with basic kinds of everyday experience, even when situated in fictional narratives, such as empathizing with a superhero’s desire to conquer an evil antagonist, simply by dint of having experienced some type of social oppression, ourselves. The range of empathic identity can be complex, with some works—Shakespeare’s in particular—capturing not only situational kinds of empathy, such as romantic love in Romeo and Juliet, but layering into basic empathic domains additional types of categorial and situational empathies. An example would be understanding why two lovers desire one another—a kind of basic situational empathy—while also understanding why desiring someone in an out-group poses unique challenges (assuming, qua categorial empathy, that we can identify with being perceived as an outsider, or can relate to ingroup versus outgroup antagonisms). Both Romeo and Juliet are born into competing principalities; most of us cannot categorically identify with this type of circumstance; yet we nevertheless empathize, situationally, with the lovers’ unique distress as they struggle to maintain their bonds in the face of familial opposition. Many works exploit our capacity to readily identify with basic kinds of empathic value, such as using children actors in a horror film to appeal to an audience’s empathy for children’s welfare, or the use of dramatic music to enhance an otherwise banal series of events. Critics may judge a work to be weak that relies solely on exploiting domains of intrinsic emotional value, yet such a judgment would not amount to a disinterested aesthetic attitude; on the contrary, if a work reliably provokes emotion, predicated on its own representational content, then it can be said to hold intrinsic value, even if the quality or impact of that value is limited. The degree to which a work provokes emotion depends on the richness of its emotional representational landscape, whether an emotion felt is weak or strong, simplistic or nuanced.

When viewed through the broader lens of shared representational experience—our capacity to emotionally engage with others’ plights and pleasures—empathy thus becomes central to whatever could be said to be universally appealing (or repugnant) about a work of art. Yet again, however, whatever could be identified as “a” universal, intrinsic value in a work does not necessitate some kind of uniform response to that value-conferring content: a universal psychological substrate does not determine shared response-profiles across readers, only predictable patterns of response.

 

Evaluation and literary universals

Both emotional and empathic domains of universality conjoin in our pursuit for critical agreement over a work’s literary merits. As Malcolm Budd has argued, a work’s value is intrinsic to “the experience the work offers” as a work of art, if we respond, emotionally, to a work with understanding (269). That is to say, we not only must find emotional rewards in a work, if it is to be deemed intrinsically valuable, but also understand (more or less fully comprehend) the work’s content. If we emote to a work from a space of misunderstanding, our value is not of the work—it is not intrinsic to the experience the work offers—but our own subjective appraisal. Many view science-fiction and fantasy genres as unrealistic and fanciful, for example; they cannot tolerate watching aliens and dragons, since these entities (clearly) do not exist. However, such viewers would not understand the narrative utility of representing universal kinds of experiences—and imagined, better alternatives—in science-fictional or fantasy settings. Works able to capture, with fidelity, universal kinds of emotional circumstances (or unique idiosyncratic preference) ought to be seen as “better than” works that try yet fail to represent content with fidelity, whether the nature of the content is realistic or fantastical. If a work tries but fails to represent universal kinds of experience (even within altogether unrealistic narrative backdrops, such as time-travel), readers cannot empathetically engage with the work’s content; such a failure may be on the part of the work, not the author or reader, and so it is commonplace to find critics in disagreement about the extent a work realistically portrays some subject (again, even if what is “realistic” is embedded in some non-realistic narrative context). Disagreement over a work’s handling of a subject, however, merely reflects divergent background exposure to the same, basic kind of experience, such as feeling morbidly threatened by a sexual rival rather than mildly amused, when what is common between both experiences is sexual rivalry. That we can disagree about a work’s representation of a subject strongly suggests that we share universal emotional and empathic kinds of responses to that subject. Universality is thus necessary for judging particular (and idiosyncratic) literary representations of natural kind of emotional experience.

Consider an example. Barbara Herrnstein Smith has argued, using Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 as her reference point, that our values for a literary work are radically contingent on circumstances external to the work’s representational content. When we read “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove,” some readers—on Smith’s account—may respond with identity or repugnance, depending on their life’s circumstance. Having gone through a divorce, Smith found herself responding to Sonnet 116 with an opposing emotional valance compared to how she used to feel, when reading the same sonnet while happily married (13). Would we then say that Sonnet 116 lacks a stable kind of intrinsic value? The short answer is no. The longer answer would be this: there is a complex kind of emotional phenomenology at play in Sonnet 116 that we can all readily appreciate, whether we agree with Shakespeare’s thesis that love ought to remain steadfast over time or not, or whether we can share an understanding for what “true minds” means or not. Having a falling out with a loved one may temporarily shift the valence of our response to love poems, but not our basic understanding of those poems’ intrinsic values. Any kind of emotional theme, for that matter—revenge, injustice, desire—is grounded in psychological systems capable of representing and responding characteristically to the type of emotional scenario in question (Tooby and Cosmides).

Consider another example. Even if we have not experienced intense sexual jealousy, is not Othello’s sexual paranoia readily understood? We find Othello’s situation emotionally sympathetic without any need to have already experienced his particular type of situation. I should think that it is precisely because Shakespeare preoccupies himself with recurring, natural kinds of emotional situations that most readers find his works timelessly rewarding (van Peer).

Works that do not represent emotional kinds of experience, for that matter, cannot then possess intrinsic value, even those works whose emotional contents are not readily apparent in the work itself, as perceived, but found instead in an understanding of the work’s conceptual irony (a commonplace example being Duchamp’s Fountain). That we find Duchamp’s Fountain amusing depends on a shared understanding (grounded in perceptual engagement with works of art over time) of the normative function of urinals and art museums; the value of Fountain may not be intrinsic to the work itself, as perceived in isolation; yet its ironic (amusing) value is readily grasped, all the same, given the obvious contextual mismatch between bathroom and art-display norms, and this mismatch cannot be understood without shared, embodied memories for each normative type of experience that the work calls upon. Many philosophers and neuroscientists have already formulated theories that agree with my thesis, moreover; it has long been held that emotional response is the primary mover of value-attribution (Budd “Artistic Value”; Damasio “The Neurobiological Grounding of Human Values”; Ruff and Fehr; Tappolet). I cannot, for my part, imagine an alternative to the natural emotional kinds thesis as the basis of valuation, since there is no empirical evidence suggesting that psychological, cognitive, or cultural values exist in vacuo, free from underlying emotional bases.

None of the above suggests that cognitive or cultural dimensions of appreciating a work’s value take a back seat to raw emotionality; on the contrary, following Budd’s theory of value, it is often the case that significant deliberation over time is required to fully understand a work prior to correctly gauging its merits (“The Intersubjective Validity of Aesthetic Judgments”). Indeed, neuroscientists, such as Antonio Damasio and Joseph LeDoux, and philosophers, such as Robert Solomon, no longer view the binary “emotion-cognition” as relevant, given the vast amount of empirical data showing how these components of thought exercise bidirectional influence on one another (Damasio Descartes’ Error; LeDoux The Emotional Brain; Solomon). Whatever a cognitivist would wish to offer literary criticism ought to be covered, on my view, by a close examination of categorical and situational empathies, how unique experiences lead to divergent evaluations, and the role of careful deliberation in forming final judgments; underlying any such mode of criticism, however, are neurobiological HPCs of an emotional kind. There is simply no other mechanism by which a work can be said to impart value, other than by affective indexing of an aesthetic impression.

Not only is a work’s capacity to reliably elicit an emotional response—or tap into some bit of wisdom not commonly shared across readers—central to the Literary Universal project, but literary evaluation, of any sort, depends on recognizing what a work accomplishes within various domains of universality, at the level of representation. Literary critics routinely elucidate some universally valuable implication that a work offers, even when audiences rarely understand that work’s implications or fail to see them altogether.

In sum: literary universals are not monolithic, abstract laws; they are not naively objectivist; they are contingent on mind-dependent emergence of aesthetic impressions; and they expansively account for and explain pluralities of reception—cognitive and non-cognitive—rather than reduce literary works to some utilitarian rubric of value.

 

III.

Future research

Last, there is a great deal of work left to be done exploring the nature of literary universals. To what extent, for example, can we disentangle situational from categorical empathy? Empathy seems most intuitively understood, first, not as identifying with memoriesacquired from experience—for memories, in themselves, seem too rationalistic and dry—but with emotionally salientmemories. No longer (as mentioned above) do philosophers and neuroscientists see any empirical warrant in making clear-cut distinctions between memory and emotion systems, as if these domains were somehow in opposition, since both systems coevolved to the extent that they share robust, bidirectional projections, a finding noted, early on, by Antonio Damasio (Descartes’ Error). Affective and epistemological dimensions of reader response, thus, require new, empirically informed theoretical models that accommodate literary critical nuances.

One promising area of research that may bridge the gap between cognitivism and emotivism is social neuroscience. There is a great deal of research on memory-emotion interactions that could shed light on how underlying emotional systems modulate memory, and how emotionally inflected memories, in turn, facilitate situational empathy in literary works (Kensinger et al.; Phelps and Sharot; Roozendaal and McGaugh). Future directions in literary theory ought to take heed of the many neuroscience review articles developed over the past decade, especially those pertaining to emotion-memory interactions and social cognition.

Moreover, extant literary theoretical frameworks—feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, and reader response theories, to name a few—could take stock of recent research that pins down homeostatic property clusters (HPCs) of emotional and cognitive kinds. Marxist critics, for example, might gain immensely from research on epigenetics (Fraga et al.; Levenson and Sweatt). If class struggles create environmental differences (between the haves and have-nots, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, or whatever subclasses one might stipulate), these differences likely impact intragroup phenotypical expressions, from child development onward, such as resource-scarce environments leading to increased dispositional stress in offspring (Weaver et al.). Epigenetic research, thus, may offer new, empirical support for erstwhile (seemingly otiose) Marxist critiques of the literary canon, such as those found in the work of Georg Lukács and others. Postcolonialism, also—dovetailing with the work of Frantz Fanon, perhaps—may find a great deal of empirical support for how in-group versus out-group dynamics induce racial and political biases that affect literary appraisal (Hewstone et al.; Zamboni et al.). And already, neuroscience has given new currency to tripartite psychoanalytic models of mind (id, ego, superego) that may inspire new directions in literary criticism (Solms “Freud Returns”).

Another area where much research is needed is on the intersect between top-down cognition (such as deliberative, after-the-fact appraisals of literary value) and bottom-up affective and cognitive input on evaluation. Can it rightly be said that a work whose content moves us to feel fear or desire—from watching a horror or pornography film, for example—possesses intrinsic value, by default of bottom-up encoding of salient kinds of stimuli? From a neurophysiological standpoint, it seems the answer is yes, but from a literary critical standpoint, we ought to be able to distinguish between qualitatively “superior” kinds of saliency and mere exposure to exploitative emotional content. To be sure, some may argue that “exploitation” of emotional saliency is the driving force of all good works of art, high or low, and so it is the duty of the trained critic, not the empirical researcher, to adjudicate between what counts as “good” and “bad” art of all stripes. Demarcating “good” from “bad” art is a complex problem space, and I should think that writers and critics alike would be informed by empirical research in the areas of aesthetics, value theory, appraisal, and social neuroscience; if so, literary universals that can be shown to affect evaluation, bias, and the like, could help draw lines of demarcation between “good” and “bad” art.

Research in digital humanities may gain from the Literary Universals project, also. If, say, some adaptive neural network was “taught” to identify emotional kinds of content, merely by some means of computerized assessment, then literature deemed “timelessly valuable” could be fed into these programs and subsequently mapped for content that induces emotional memory. There may also be a kind of “emotional syntax” some works employ, independent of basic kinds of emotional, representational content. Turns of phrase and surprising metaphors may drive saliency in Shakespeare’s works, for example, independent of whatever content induces situational empathy. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” contains not only an evocative idea, but the phraseology of the line would seem to enhance its aesthetic impact.

There are so many promising areas of future research that I cannot possibly trace them all, here. I have only scratched the surface. What the future holds in store for the Literary Universals project is unclear; what is clear is that empirical research on emotion, memory, perception, bias, and so forth, can all deeply inform the subtlest modes of literary criticism and theory.

 

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Patrick Colm Hogan, University of Connecticut

In “Cultural Variation Does Not Preclude Cognitive Universality,” Michelle Scalise Sugiyama has forcefully argued that the Tiv responses to Hamlet, though commonly invoked as exemplary of cultural difference, manifest important universals. In doing so, she stresses a fairly general or abstract cognitive level of universality. For example, she explains that “the Tiv object to the ghost’s choice of Hamlet as his avenger” because “according to their custom, important matters such as revenge and punishment are the purview of chiefs and elders.” She sees this, quite rightly, as manifesting a cross-cultural commitment to “social contract.” The main point I wish to make in this comment is that, here and elsewhere, the universality does not operate solely at this general level.

Consider the particular case just mentioned. The conflict between social authority and personal impulses of revenge is not special to the Tiv; it is, in fact, a recurring thematic concern in western revenge stories. One of the most important and foundational works of western literature, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, treats the topic explicitly. In focusing on the issue of personal revenge and social authority, the Tiv villagers have isolated a central thematic concern in Hamlet and in revenge narratives generally. Indeed, I would argue that one of the most discussed topics in Hamlet criticism—why does Hamlet delay?—is best understood in light of this conflict. Hamlet delays because he is taking on two roles from two related, but distinct genres. He is not only a revenger, but an (ideally, impartial) criminal investigator as well. In other words, he is trying to address part of the problem isolated by the Tiv villagers.

This is not an isolated point. Scalise Sugiyama goes on to explain that “the Tiv condemn Hamlet for his desire to kill Claudius: ‘For a man to raise his hand against his father’s brother and the one who has become his father—that is a terrible thing’” (quoting Bohannan 51). She relates this to “Tiv rules,” which is of course correct. But the special status of kinship and attachment bonds in this context is not unique to the Tiv. Indeed, “familialization” of conflict is one of the key techniques of emotion intensification in literature across cultures (see my The Mind 227). As such, it is crucial to the development of story universals. To take a non-European and non-African example, we see this sort of intensification in different versions of the important, Chinese revenge story concerning the orphan of Zhao (赵氏孤儿; Zhàoshì gū’ér), where the orphan takes revenge for his biological father against a man who is in effect his adoptive father.

Along the same lines, Scalise Sugiyama discusses Polonius’s concerns about Ophelia’s chastity. She explains that “in Tiv terms . . . Polonius is worried that Hamlet’s romantic interest in Ophelia might compromise her honor, thereby lowering her bride price.” True, Polonius is not going to receive a bride price, so there is a cultural difference there. But this is more than a general matter of sharing “social exchange reasoning.” In terms of story universals, Polonius is here envisioning a fairly prototypical seduction story (see chapter four of my Affective). The seduction story involves a woman’s loss of marriage and life opportunities—and typically her family’s disgrace—due to non-marital sexual relations. This bears on the social and familial control of female sexuality, patterns in the development of ethical systems related to sexuality, and other cross-cultural practices and ideas that are more specific than social exchange reasoning.

As the preceding points suggest, the specificity of these cross-cultural patterns is connected with the surprising specificity of some cross-cultural patterns in genre (see “Story Universals”). There is certainly “diversity of themes, styles, and genres in world literature,” as Scalise Sugiyama points out. But there is also a great deal of continuity in genres (heroic, romantic, sacrificial, familial separation, revenge, seduction, criminal investigation) and themes (celebrating the in-group in heroic stories, criticizing individual revenge in opposition to standard social procedures in revenge stories), perhaps even styles (as may be suggested by points in Dan Shen’s “Commonalities behind/beside Differences between Chinese and English Narratives”).

In connection with this, it is worth noting that universals are not confined to innate patterns. It seems very unlikely that we are born with specific story templates. The common story structures are, rather, the result of storytellers realizing that some patterns are particularly effective. For example, outcome emotions are more intense when there is a change from a preceding emotion. Thus, happy endings are generally happier when they are preceded by seemingly tragic middles. The story structure that proceeds through loss to success need not be imprinted in our genes to arise in different traditions. Social development–of genre or anything else–can be convergent as well as divergent.

In sum, Scalise Sugiyama has written a cogent and insightful essay on the universals that underlie cultural differences. Indeed, Scalise Sugiyama’s argument can be pushed farther. The universals are not confined to a very abstract level, but extend down to the more specific level of genre and theme–though of course they do not go so far as to render genre and theme cross-culturally uniform.

Works Cited

Bohannan, Laura. “Shakespeare in the Bush.” Originally published in Natural History 75 (1966): 28-33. Reprinted in The Informed Reader: Contemporary Issues in the Disciplines. Ed. C. Bazerman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989, 43-53.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Suzanne Keen, Washington and Lee University

The proposition that narrative empathy[1] qualifies as a literary universal could have no less likely an advocate than me. I have argued that no one narrative reliably evokes empathy from all its readers, listeners, or viewers (Empathy and the Novel, 65-84).  I have also suggested that the co-creative work performed by readers (listeners, viewers) contributes substantively to the scripted worldmaking of fiction and nonfiction narrative (“Empathy in Reading,” 50-4). It is in my view literally the case that no two readers encounter and respond to the same narrative, because no two readers bring the same set of literary predispositions, life experiences, identities, desires, and memories to the co-creative task (50).

For their part, authors and makers of narrative across media apparently differ in their ambition to evoke empathy from readers: some making it a priority and employing broadcast and ambassadorial strategic narrative empathy to assure empathic responses from as many readers as possible; some taking it for granted as they aim representations at a familiar in-group and employing bounded strategic empathy (Keen “Strategic Empathizing”); and some swearing it off altogether, whether in pursuit of a more rational response, or aiming for discordant emotions such as disgust or shock. Literary historians and scholars of narrative genres have demonstrated that many of the qualities that readers and critics associate with empathic potential in a work of fiction, such as representation of a character’s interior perspective, have histories of development (Fludernik and Keen 456-7). Look early enough in the literary tradition and you just won’t find it.  Treatments of core qualities of narrative that can be presumed to exist from pre-historic oral storytelling to the present diversity of narrative media and modes seem more promising leads in the quest for formal universals, but several logical leaps intervene between identifying a literary universal (such as a character type, event, or plot sequence) and affirming the emotion that its appearance might be supposed reliably to evoke from most people, across the millennia. Empathy may be a narrative universal not in the sense of being a demonstrable effect of narrative (where the empirical evidence is scanty), but rather as an enabling condition for narrative derived from, and evolved along with other aspects of our shared humanity. In that case, however, it ceases being the business of a narrative theorist to describe it. We are on solid ground observing that literary practice in a variety of genres reveals that makers have sought to communicate audiences whose feelings, attitudes, and commitments they might sway by means of strategic narrative empathy, but the uncertainty of the effects and the difficulty of demonstrating causal links between underlying human biological abilities, cultural expressions in diverse historical contexts, motives, messages, and responses should give us pause.

Historians of the emotions such as Ute Frevert argue that empathy is a modern, global, recent arrival—pervasive and influential, to be sure, but no more universal than the emotions, such as honor and shame, that were more highly valued and motivating in the past (Frevert 10-12). In contrast, neuroscientists and evolutionary psychologists suggest that empathy is an evolved ability that has contributed to human survival from prehistoric times, undergirding care for helpless infants (Hrdy 137-38) and success in anticipating the behavior of prey animals (Sarnecki). The science of mirror neurons suggests that the human shared manifold for intersubjectivity (Gallese) is physiologically related to the capacities of birds to fly in a flock together, primates to imitate each other (de Waal 52, 63-4), or pack animals to support one another (Cassidy and McIntyre). Whether empathy is a new name for a very old phenomenon (Wispé), or a relatively recently fashionable capacity, contributing, as Steven Pinker has argued, to lessening of violence, warfare, and mass murder in contrast to our prehistoric ancestors as a humanitarian context for kinder behavior develops (169-77), remains a subject of debate. As Pinker writers, “the word empathy is barely a century old” (573) and the form of it “that gets valorized today—an altruistic concern for others—cannot be equated with the ability to think what they are thinking or feel what they are feeling” (574).[2]  Pinker astutely observes that “today’s empathy craze has been set off by scrambling the various senses of the word empathy” (576) and he criticizes overselling the consequences of possessing a mirror neuron system (577).

Even for those who regard empathic ability as a fundamental human trait, rooted in our bio-physiology and social natures, failures to empathize over boundaries of difference and limitations of empathy’s reach suggest that its targets are far from universal (Young 32; Keen, “Empathy Studies” 127). Just because humans can feel empathy does not mean that humans routinely do share feelings with one another, especially across boundaries of difference as evidenced by empathic faltering caused by familiarity/similarity biases (Hoffman 197, 206). Furthermore, the psychology of human empathy has amply demonstrated that the variety of phenomena that go under the umbrella term “empathy” (Batson 3-16) exist to greater and lesser degrees across populations of people, as studies using empathy scales such as Mark Davis’s IRI reveal (Davis 85). Some people have such low empathic ability as to find the cognitive and affective invitations of narrative fiction unappealing, whereas others, such as high-empathy individuals who resonate to the imaginary experiences of nonexistent beings, may spend significant numbers of their waking hours immersed in fiction. These individual differences may be altered by exposure to fiction (Koopman and Hakemulder), but it is important to acknowledge that even those psychologists who regard empathy as a capacity of other-orientation shared by all humans generally see it as stronger in some and weaker to the point of pathology in others.

Yet setting all these caveats to the side allows me to ask whether narrative empathy taps into universals of narrative—universals associated with the core ingredients of stories, with the maker or author’s techniques for evoking reactions from an audience, or with the responses of readers/listeners/viewers to the shared qualities of narrativity.  This entire set of possibilities rests on the assumption that narrative is a distinctive form of communication shared by human beings over a certain developmental age, which shows in children’s pretend play (Boyd 5-6) and is fostered by all cultures, albeit in different media and genres. This far I can go. Though it would certainly be possible to generate a list of literary themes that might be supposed to evoke similar reactions from members of diverse human audiences, including potentially empathetic responses, such a project would require many layers of historical and contextual scrutiny, and I do not attempt it here. I accept Alan Richardson’s caution that the study of literary universals “will prove more convincing if it concentrates on formal features and constraints, rhetorical and prosodic devices, and questions of genre and narrative, treating thematic elements or other aspects of content more sparely and with special caution” (Richardson 569-70). In my view, this advice makes sense for two reasons. First, some evidence does exist (for instance about the impact of rhythmic language) of highly predictable effects of literary devices on diverse audiences, and the field of empirical aesthetics.[3] Second, the systematic investigation of impact can proceed towards empirical demonstration if specific devices or features, whose presence, absence, or prominence can be manipulated, receive our scrutiny.  I agree with Richardson that theme and content should be handled with caution. Taking Richardson’s advice means setting aside several promising content-based suggestions about narrative empathy, including Lynn Hunt’s historical argument that in eighteenth century Britain (in tandem with the emergence of human rights discourse), certain character types typified by their vulnerability became targets of compassion, fellow-feeling, and sympathy, precursor terms that contain aspects of what we now label empathy (Hunt 28-32). While representations of cruelty to animals and children certainly play a part in the history of developing empathetic representation and human rights discourse, there is nothing automatic about that trajectory.  As Simon Dickie has argued, cruelty itself may evoke glee and other forms of sadistic pleasure, cementing group identities by mocking and excluding derided others.

To broach the three angles of approach that I have identified—concerning matters of form and genre, matters of craft, and matters of reception—in the endeavor of identifying possible narrative universals, I suggest first how narrative empathy might (or might not) intersect with them. As I have previously defined it, narrative empathy involves “the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s situation and condition.” It “plays a role in the aesthetics of production when authors experience it. . . in mental simulation during reading, in the aesthetics of reception when readers experience it, and in the narrative poetics of texts when formal strategies invite it. Narrative empathy overarches narratological categories, involving actants, narrative situation, matters of pace and duration, and storyworld features such as settings” (Keen “Narrative Empathy”). Certainly, the involvement of formal qualities and generic conventions cue up readerly expectations, as Peter Rabinowitz has persuasively argued in Before Reading. Yet documenting the precise role played by narrative techniques deliberately manipulated to evoke predictable audience responses has been rather more elusive than conclusive.[4] The collaborative co-creation of fictional worlds by readers and viewers, the theorizing of what they bring to the narrative transaction, and the documentation of reliable stimuli of empathy in reading or viewing narrative would all benefit from further study.

Many narrative techniques have been nominated as especially likely to induce empathy:

These techniques include manipulations of narrative situation to channel perspective or person of the narration and representation of fictional characters’ consciousness (Schneider 2001), point of view (Andringa et al. 2001), and paratexts of fictionality (Keen 2007: 88–9). Other elements thought to be involved in readers’ empathy include vivid use of settings and traversing of boundaries (Friedman 1998), metalepsis, serial repetition of narratives set in a stable storyworld (Warhol 2003), lengthiness (Nussbaum 1990), encouraging immersion or transportation of readers (Nell 1988), generic conventions (Jameson 1981), metanarrative interjections (Fludernik 2003; Nünning 2001, 2004), and devices such as foregrounding (Miall 1989), disorder, or defamiliarization that slow reading pace (Zillman 1991). (Keen “Narrative Empathy”).

Examining this list for candidates that might universally—or at least ubiquitously and reliably—invoke empathy narrows the scope of inquiry.

In narratives, representation of fictional consciousness from an inside view, using the variety of techniques associated with perspectival narrative situation, develops in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, as Franz Stanzel intuited and subsequent scholars have demonstrated (Keen and Fludernik). Though it is true that dramatic soliloquies in the early modern period and lyric poetry in the classical period offer internal perspectives, a perspectival center of consciousness (described by some as especially empathetic) develops centuries later. Though ubiquitous now, it is far from a narrative universal taken over the millennia for which we have evidence.  Even in empirical work undertaken with large numbers of research subjects today, formal manipulations of perspectival representations of characters’ consciousness do not necessarily reveal a link to empathy. When put to the test, for example in contrast with first-person narrative perspectives, “manipulation of narrative perspective did not effect empathy for the character” (van Lissa, Caracciolo, van Duuren, and van Lueveren 43). Similarly, paratexts of fictionality only make sense as empathetic primers of readers when the generic distinction between fiction and nonfiction narrative influences readers’ and viewers’ sense of the relative force of a narrative’s truth claims. This distinction also has a history. The possibility of a narrative universal seems not to inhere in the fiction/nonfiction difference, for the boundary between these categories is highly permeable and movable (Lennard Davis). Nailing down the distinctiveness of fictional narrative (as contrasted with nonfictional narrative) from a formal angle is in itself an area of narratological controversy.[5]

Within the scope of narrative artists’ tool-kit lie the various shapes and delivery-systems that alter the pace and offer opportunities for immersion in a story world. These seem more likely to reveal narrative universals than fine-grained decisions about technique. For example, serial delivery of stories—with its repetitions and returns and its leveraging of interruption and gaps to create cliff-hangers around breaks in the narration—seems intuitively to evoke empathy and other emotions of reception, though recipient impatience or boredom pose risks. Lengthiness and seriality on their own may interfere with the story-world trance of transportation or immersion that seems highly likely to be involved in narrative empathy.[6] Several other tactics of stories ancient and modern, metalepsis (commonly known as frame-breaking) and metanarrative interjections,[7] may work with narrative disorder and foregrounding (or defamiliarization) to evoke empathy, as David Miall and Don Kuiken have argued (and provided useful tools for studying).  The core affects associated with narrativity itself, curiosity, surprise, and suspense (as theorized by Meir Sternberg in Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction) may be reliably generated by the tension between the story and discourse, but curiosity about, surprise at, and suspense felt for circumstances and emotions represented within the story world suggest a sympathetic (congruent) rather than an empathetic (matching) emotion structure. Richard J. Gerrig’s now classic work on participatory responses to narrative places readers’ responses at the center of the scholarly endeavor to identify causes and correlates of empathetic narrative impact, a project to which psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley has also materially contributed. The most promising work on narrative universals when it comes to readers’ emotional experiences of empathy and other emotions will combine the insights of psychologists carrying out empirical studies of real readers with the resources of rhetorical theories of narrative as a mode of human communication and persuasion.

Yet when we reach what logically must be the sweet spot for such interdisciplinary collaborations and conversations, profound challenges to acceptable conclusions about literary universals remain. The necessity for limiting variables in empirical work inevitably appears reductionist to literary critics whose disciplinary assumptions include respect for both complexity and uniqueness. I agree with Claudia Breger’s suggestion that narrative worldmaking is a “multidimensional, ‘multivectoral’ assemblage of heterogeneous elements” (Breger 227), where readers criss-crossed with the markers of intersectional identity co-create with authors. As long as we swear off making over-simplified predictions about how (for example) narrative empathy leads inexorably to altruism and good world citizenship (in Martha Nussbaum’s formulation), we need not be at an impasse. Narrative empathy could be an especially vital quality if it is a capacity that permits co-creation and narrative communication in spite of our manifest differences.  If it is true, in Breger’s words, that “the rhetorical processes of narration and reading engage affects, bodily memories, and associations in layered transactions between characters, narrators, implied and actual readers and authors” (227), then narrative empathy could be involved as latent network of connections, potentiating activation of the shared manifold for intersubjectivity. It could work across the ages, crossing the gulf created by time and distance, and it could link makers and recipients despite the barriers of unfamiliarity and dissimilarity. Narrative empathy in this conception could be a literary universal without over-promising a consistent response to any one narrative technique, genre, character type, or plot event, and without boiling down the ocean of story.

[See also Patrick Colm Hogan, “Comments on Keen.’”]

Works Cited

Andringa, Els, Petra van Horssen, Astrid Jacobs, and Ed Tan. “Point of View and Viewer Empathy in Film.” New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. Ed. Willie van Peer and Seymour Chatman. SUNY P, 2001, pp. 83–99.

Batson, C. Daniel. “These Things Called Empathy: Eight Related but Distinct Phenomena.” The Social Neuroscience of Empathy.  Eds. Jean Decety and William Ickes. MIT P, 2011, pp. 3-16.

Breger, Claudia. “Affects in Configuration: A New Approach to Narrative Worldmaking.” Narrative 25.2 (May 2017): 227-51.

Boyd, Brian.  On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Harvard UP, 2009.

Cassidy, Kira A. and Richard T. McIntyre. “Do Gray Wolves (Canis lupus) Support Pack Mates During Aggressive Inter-pack Interactions?” Animal Cognition 19 (2016): 939-47.

Cohn, Dorrit. The Distinction of Fiction. The Johns Hopkins UP, 2000.

Davis, Mark. “A Multidimensional Approach to Individual Differences in Empathy.” JSAS Catalog of Selected Documents in Psychology, 10 (1980): 85.

Davis, Lennard J. Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel. U of Pennsylvania P, 1983.

de Waal, Frans B. M. “The ‘Russian doll’ model of empathy and imitation.” On Being Moved: From Mirror Neurons to Empathy. Ed. Stein Bråten. John Benjamins, 2007, pp. 49-69.

Dickie, Simon. Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century. U of Chicago P, 2011.

Fletcher, Angus and John Monterosso. “The Science of Free-Indirect Discourse: An Alternate Cognitive Effect.” Narrative 24.1 (Jan. 2016): 82-103.

Fludernik, Monika. “Metanarrative and Metafictional Commentary: From Metadiscusivity to Metanarration and Metafiction.” Poetica 35 (2003):1–39.

Fludernik, Monica and Suzanne Keen. “Introduction: Narrative Perspectives and Interior Spaces in Literature Prior to 1850.” Style 48.4 (winter 2014): 453-60.

Frevert, Ute. Emotions in History—Lost and Found. New York: Central European University Press, 2013.

Friedman, Susan Stanford. Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton UP, 1998.

Gabriel, Shira and A. F. Young. “Becoming a vampire without being bitten: the narrative collective-assimilation hypothesis.” Psychological Science 22.8 (22 Aug. 2011): 990-4. doi: 10.1177/0956797611415541.

Gallese, Vittorio. “The Roots of Empathy: The Shared Manifold Hypothesis and the Neural Basis for Intersubjectivity. Psychopathology 36.4 (2003): 171-80.

Gérard Genette, Nitsa Ben-Ari and Brian McHale. “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.” Poetics Today 11, 4, Narratology Revisited II (Winter, 1990): 755-774.

Gerrig, Richard J. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.

Gerrig, Richard J. and David N. Rapp. “Psychological Processes Underlying Literary Impact.” Poetics Today 25 (2004): 265–81.

Green, Melanie C. “Transportation into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism.” Discourse Processes 38 (2004): 247-66.

Green, Melanie C., Christopher Chatham, and Marc A. Sestir. “Emotion and transportation into fact and fiction.” Scientific Study of Literature 2.1 (2012): 37-59.

Hoffman, Martin. Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. Cambridge UP, 2000.

Hunt, Lynn. Inventing Human Rights: A History. W. W. Norton, 2007.

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others: the Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Harvard UP, 2009.

Jameson, Frederic (1981). The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell UP, 1981.

Johnson, Dan R. “Transportation into a story increases empathy, prosocial behavior, and perceptual bias toward fearful expressions.” Personality and Individual Differences 52, (2012): 150-55.

Keen, Suzanne. “‘Altruism’ Makes a Space for Empathy, 1852.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=suzanne-keen-altruism-makes-a-space-for-empathy-1852 [7 Oct. 2017].

—. Empathy and the Novel. Oxford UP, 2007.

—. “Empathy in Reading: Considerations of Gender and Ethnicity.” Focus on Reception and Reader Response. Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 24. 2 (2013): 49-65.

—. “Empathy Studies.” A Companion to Literary Theory. Ed. David S. Richter. Wiley-Blackwell, 2018, pp. 126-38.

—. “Human Rights Discourse and Universals of Cognition and Emotion: Postcolonial Fiction.” The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies. Ed. Lisa Zunshine. Oxford UP, 2015, pp. 347-55.

—. “Narrative Empathy.” the living handbook of narratology. Ed. Peter Hühn, et. al. Hamburg University.  [view date:13 Jun 2017].

—. “Strategic Empathizing: Techniques of Bounded, Ambassadorial, and Broadcast Narrative Empathy.” Deutsche Vierteljahr Schrift 82.3 (2008): 477-93.

Kidd, David Comer and Emanuele Castano. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342.6156 (18 Oct 2013): 377-380.

Koopmann, Eva Maria and Frank Hakemulder. “Effects of Literature on Empathy and Self-Reflection: A Theoretical-Empirical Framework” JLT 9.1 (2015): 79–111.

Mar, Raymond A., Keith Oatley, and J. B. Peterson. “Exploring the link between reading fiction and empathy: Ruling out individual differences and examining outcomes.” Communications 34.4 (2009): 407-28.

Miall, David S. “Beyond the Schema Given: Affective Comprehension of Literary Narratives.” Cognition and Emotion 3 (1989): 55–78.

Miall, David S. and Don Kuiken. “Aspects of Literary Response: A New Questionnaire.” Research in the Teaching of English 29 (1995): 37-58. Print.

Nell, Victor. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure. Yale UP, 1988.

Nünning, Ansgar. “Mimesis des Erzählens: Prolegomena zu einer Wirkungsästhetik, Typologie und Funktionsgeschichte des Akts des Erzählens und der Metanarration.” Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20 Jahrhundert: Narratologische Studien aus Anlass des 65. Geburtstags von Wilhelm Füger. Ed. J. Helbig. (Winter 2001): 13–47.

—. “On Metanarrative: Towards a Definition, a Typology and an Outline of the Functions of Metanarrative Commentary.” The Dynamics of Narrative Form. Studies in Anglo-American Narratology. Ed. John Pier. de Gruyter, 2004, pp. 11–57.

Nünning, Vera. “Narrative Fiction and Cognition: Why We Should Read Fiction.” Forum for World Literature Studies 7.1 (March 2015):  41-61.

—. Reading Fictions, Changing Minds: The Cognitive Value of Fiction. Schriften des Marsilius-Kollegs.  Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2014.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature. Oxford UP, 1990.

Oatley, Keith. Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Pinker, Stephen. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined. Viking, 2011.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ohio State UP, 1987.

Richardson, Alan. “Rethinking Romantic Incest: Human Universals, Literary Representation, and the Biology of Mind.” New Literary History, 31.3 (Summer 2000): 553-572. http://muse.jhu.edu/article/24531

Sarnecki, John. “The Emergence of Empathy in the Context of Cross-species Mind Reading.” Biosemiotics 8. Origins of mind. Ed. L. Swan. Springer, 2013, pp. 129-142.

Schneider, Ralf. “Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literary Character: The Dynamics of Mental-Model Construction.” Style 35 (2001): 607–42.

Stanzel, Franz K. Theory of Narrative. Trans. Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge UP, 1984.

Sternberg, Meir. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. The Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.

—. “Proteus in Quotation-Land: Mimesis and the Forms of Reported Discourse.” Poetics Today 3.2 (1982): 107-156.

van Lissa, Caspar J., Marco Caracciolo, Thom van Duuren,  and Bram van Lueveren. “Difficult Empathy The Effect of Narrative Perspective on Readers’ Engagement with a First-Person Narrator.” DIEGESIS. Interdisciplinary E-Journal for Narrative Research / Interdisziplinäres E-Journal für Erzählforschung 5.1 (2016): 43-63. URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:468-20160607-151127-7.

Warhol, Robyn. Having a Good Cry: Effeminate Feelings and Pop-Culture Forms. Ohio State UP, 2003.

Wispé, Lauren. “History of the Concept of Empathy.” Empathy and its Development. Ed. Nancy Eisenberg and Janet Strayer. Cambridge UP, 1987, pp. 17-37.

Young, Allan. “Empathy, Evolution, and Human Nature.” Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. Ed. Jean Decety. MIT P, 2012, pp. 21-37.

Zillman, Dolf. “Empathy: Affect from Bearing Witness to the Emotions of Others.” Responding to the Screen: Reception and Reaction Processes. Eds. Dolf Zillman and J. B. Bryant. Erlbaum, 1991, pp. 135–67.

—. “Mechanisms of Emotional Involvement with Drama.” Poetics 23 (1995): 33–51.

Notes

[1] See the definition and discussion at Living Handbook of Narratology.

[2] On this topic, see Keen, “‘Altruism’ Makes a Space for Empathy, 1852″

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=suzanne-keen-altruism-makes-a-space-for-empathy-1852.

[3] The field of empirical aesthetics (after the pioneering research of Berlyne) has focused more on music and visual art than on literary texts, but researchers at the Max Planck Institute are on the case: https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/research/department-of-language-and-literature.html .

[4] Over a decade ago, in Empathy and the Novel, I documented the lacunae in the research about potentially empathy-inducing narrative techniques.  Since that time, good empirical work has been done about the impact of free indirect discourse (Fletcher and Monterosso), worldmaking that invites immersion reading (Johnson), fiction that offers opportunities for a feeling of belonging through joining a fictional crowd, and sympathetic depictions of outgroup members (Gabriel and Young). The most prominent studies, such as Kidd and Castano’s research on the benefits of reading literary fiction on Theory of Mind do not zero on particular narrative techniques whose presence or absence makes a difference in readers’ empathy (though they speculate about the influence of fiction’s invitation to fill gaps through inferences). Vera Nünning’s research into the cognitive benefits of fiction reading deserves attention, not least because she brings a narratologist’s sensitivity to the potential Protean impacts of form, following Meir Sternberg’s influential cautions in “Proteus in Quotation-Land.”

[5] For starting points on this debate, see Dorrit Cohn, The Distinction of Fiction and the response in Poetics Today by Gérard Genette, Nitsa Ben-Ari and Brian McHale, “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.”

[6] For suggestive theorization of the role of transportation in voluntary pleasure reading, see Nell, Lost in a Book. For an empirical study of the impact of reader transportation/immersion on empathy, see Johnson, “Transportation into a story.” For the involvement of readers’ emotions, experiences, and expectations, see the works of Melanie C. Green and her collaborators.

[7] On the effects of metalepsis and metanarrative, see the discussions of the theoretical issues in essays by Monika Fludernik and Ansgar Nünning.

Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, University of Oregon

Introduction

In her 1966 essay, “Shakespeare in the Bush,” the anthropologist Laura Bohannan challenged the received wisdom that great literary works speak to universal human concerns and conditions and, by implication, that human nature is the same across cultures. Her claim was based on a sample size of one culture: the Tiv of West Africa. In the course of summarizing the plot of Hamlet for a small group of Tiv villagers, she found that their interpretation of the play was different from hers, and took this as evidence of fundamental inter-cultural psychic differences. In so doing, she made two misguided assumptions: (1) that there is a homogeneous “Western” interpretation of the play; and (2) that cultural variation is prima facie evidence of the absence of human universals. My 2003 essay on the subject (Scalise Sugiyama, “Cultural Variation”) addressed the second of these assumptions, showing that cultural variation and cognitive universality are not mutually exclusive phenomena. This becomes apparent when the issue is framed in terms of the ecological niche to which humans are adapted.

Every species occupies a given ecological niche, and every ecological niche poses a set of adaptive problems—problems that affect the organism’s ability to survive and/or reproduce. Collectively, the set of adaptive problems posed by the human ecological niche can be thought of as the human condition, or the ineluctable challenges of human existence. In turn, the cognitive capacities that evolved to respond to these problems can be thought of as human nature. Adaptive problems and the cognitive software designed to address them are more or less constant across cultures; what varies between them is habitat and the events that transpire therein. Due to ecological and episodic variation, the means and information relevant to addressing adaptive problems differ from place to place; thus, different cultures result in large part from universal cognitive structures responding to universal problems as they play out under different sets of ecological conditions. We find differences between cultures not because human neurocognitive architecture varies in design, but because human habitats vary in resources, constraints, and history. On this view, we would expect stories to reflect both, human universals and cultural particularities: we would expect to find universality at the macro level (e.g., adaptive problems, cognitive adaptations) and variation at the micro level (e.g., local constraints on fitness, local solutions to adaptive problems).

In my 2003 essay, I showed that this prediction is borne out by closer examination of fundamental concepts at the heart of the play, such as incest, murder, and revenge. The Tiv not only recognize these behaviors, they exhibit predictable emotional responses to them and rules aimed at regulating them. Their rules differ somewhat from the practices evinced in the world of the play (which largely reflect Renaissance English law), but this variation can be traced to differences in local economic practices, which in turn stem from differences in habitat and historical trajectories. If this variation grew from differences in human psychology, we would expect Tiv culture to lack words, attitudes, and rules pertaining to these behaviors. In the present essay, I supplement my earlier analysis by explaining the role that culture plays in the human ecological niche, and discussing some of the shared reasoning and motivational systems exhibited by Bohannan and the Tiv in their reaction to Hamlet.

The Human Ecological Niche

One of the most obvious facts about human cultures is that they exhibit variation. This would appear to argue against the existence of human universals were it not for another, equally important fact: culture itself is a human universal (Brown, Human Universals, 130). Not merely “creators and users of cultures” (Goodenough, Description, 129-130), humans are a culture-dependent animal (Boyd et al., “Cultural Niche”). To a greater degree than other species, humans depend for their living on complex manipulations of the physical and social environment. This “instrumental intelligence” (Tooby & DeVore, “Reconstruction”) enables humans to bypass their anatomical limitations and acquire resources that would otherwise be unavailable to them (Kaplan et al., “Human Life History Evolution”), and has enabled them to colonize virtually every terrestrial habitat on the planet. Different habitats present different challenges, which in turn require different technologies and tactics. This, along with historical happenstance, is ultimately the source of cultural variation: there is no single set of knowledge, tools, and practices that provides effective solutions under all ecological conditions.

When confronted with the diversity of cultural solutions to recurrent problems of human existence, it is easy to mistake variation for an absence of universals. This is because, in the humanities and social sciences, the study of culture does not tend to concern itself with questions of origin and design. From a biological, evolutionary perspective, however, these questions are paramount: complex cultural behavior is one of the things that distinguishes humans zoologically from other species. Humans use culture because they are designed to—that is, they have evolved cognitive traits that enable them to generate and transmit ideas, artifacts, and customs. Chief among these traits is the ability to reason counterfactually, which enables humans to imagine things that do not exist, have not happened, or cannot be detected by the raw senses. Also referred to as “improvisational intelligence” (Barrett et al., “Cognitive Niche,” 242) and the “mental simulation of alternative perspectives” (Schacter et al., “Remembering,” 660), this capacity scaffolds the ability to generate new ideas, anticipate the future, and intuit the mental states of others. Hand in hand with this capacity goes a profoundly causal understanding of the phenomenological world. Combined, these two capacities enable humans to run mental simulations of possible problems, solutions, and outcomes (Tooby & DeVore, “Reconstruction”), which is the essence of invention, planning, and prediction. Our highly developed capacities for cooperation and communication make it possible for us to share this information, which in turn leads to cumulative culture (Tomasello, Cultural Origins; Tomasello et al., “Cultural Cognition”)–vast, commonly held sets of beliefs, technologies, and behaviors.

This cognitive trifecta—counterfactual and causal reasoning, cooperation, and communication—is what enables humans to generate cultural solutions to the problems posed by their ecological niche. Unlike other animals, humans do not have to wait around for new adaptations to evolve in response to novel environmental developments; instead, they can invent solutions of their own in real time (Barrett et al., “Cognitive Niche”). Our ancestors who moved onto the African savannas millions of years ago did not evolve sharp claws and powerful jaws for digging tubers and killing game, but that did not prevent them from accessing these resource bonanzas. Their ability to experiment, innovate, and share resultant discoveries enabled them to invent and deploy tools and tactics that accomplished the same end.

As our ancestors migrated out of Africa into novel habitats, the adaptive problems intrinsic to the human ecological niche accompanied them. No matter where they went, they faced the same fundamental tasks, such as route finding, acquiring food, securing protection from the elements, forming cooperative networks, selecting mates, rearing children, and resolving conflict. These are universal human problems, but they manifest differently across habitats due to variation in flora, fauna, topography, and climate. Different technologies and resource acquisition strategies, in turn, mandate different practices, customs, and rules. Marriage is a case in point. Coastal Tlingit traders in southern Alaska sought inland Athapaskan husbands for their daughters in order to establish social and economic ties with the interior (Cruikshank, Life, 273). Farther north among the Tareumiut and Nunamiut, however, marriages between people of different resource zones were impractical because a man could not afford to marry a woman untrained in the skills necessary for survival in his own habitat (Minc, “Scarcity”). Whether or not one sees the pan-human aspects of culture depends in large part on whether one is looking at these local solutions (e.g., exogamy or endogamy) or at the universal problems they address (e.g., finding a suitable mate).

The same principle applies to storytelling. The diversity of themes, styles, and genres in world literature may blind investigators to the psychological continuities that underlie them. The most obvious of these is narrative itself: all normally developing humans acquire the ability to produce and process narrative. Narrative is a cognitive universal, exhibiting striking continuities in content (Scalise Sugiyama, “Forager Oral Tradition”), style (Scalise Sugiyama, “Pedagogy”), and structure (Scalise Sugiyama, “Narrative”) across cultures. The latter is particularly illustrative: narrative structure appears to be designed to represent agency—that is, goal-directed action and the set of environmental constraints under which it occurs (Scalise Sugiyama, “Narrative”). Narrative is not merely about characters, it is about their goals, obstacles encountered in the pursuit of those goals, and solutions devised and deployed to surmount those obstacles (Scalise Sugiyama, “Reverse-engineering”). In other words, stories are mental simulations of problems, solutions, and outcomes encountered (or that might be encountered) in the course of human experience. Because obstacles and solutions emanate from the local environment, and environments vary across time and space, the obstacles and solutions depicted in stories vary from culture to culture. Thus, as with culture in general, whether or not one sees the universal aspects of storytelling depends on where one looks.

Differences in traditional caribou exploitation among the Tanana, Ingalik, and Chipewyan peoples illustrate how the same psychology produces variation in response to different ecological conditions. Each of these sub-Arctic Athapaskan culture groups depended on caribou for a substantial portion of their livelihood, but their degree of dependency and their hunting methods varied according to the distribution of caribou in their respective territories (Heffley, “Northern Athapaskan”). Caribou were only available in Tanana territory twice a year, when they passed through on their fall and spring migrations. Capture techniques capitalized on this behavior to maximize the quantity of game harvested: caribou were hunted communally using the surround method, whereby a herd is driven between two fences into an enclosed area where the animals can be more easily dispatched. Although the meat was preserved (by freezing or drying) and cached for later use, it was not sufficient to sustain the Tanana year-round, so the diet was supplemented by fishing and moose hunting in the summer and early fall. The distribution and timing of these critical resources affected Tanana settlement patterns: for most of the year, people lived in small two-family bands of 8-20 people dispersed throughout the forest, but in the spring and fall, bands joined together to maintain the surrounds and cooperate in the hunt. The Ingalik, too, hunted caribou in large numbers using the surround method, but only in the fall because the spring migration route did not pass through their territory. As a result, the Ingalik depended primarily on salmon, which they harvested and dried during the summer and stored in permanent villages for use in the winter.

The Chipewyan, in contrast, had access to caribou on a year-round basis, because their territory encompassed not only the animals’ migration routes, but their winter and summer feeding ranges as well. Consequently, caribou were hunted all year and made up 90% of the Chipewyan diet. Due to this heavy dependence on caribou, intercepting migrating herds was critical to survival. This task was complicated by the tendency of caribou to change their migration routes periodically and by the difficulty of predicting the location of new routes. In response to this problem, the Chipewyan developed an elaborate information exchange network. Search parties were sent out from local bands as the animals began to aggregate for migration, and information about their location and direction of movement was shared with other search parties and with other bands. This enabled the people to assemble in large numbers at a site that anticipated the migration route, which was critical to using the surround method. Compared with Tanana and Ingalik settlement patterns, then, Chipewyan movements were more strongly influenced by caribou behavior. The largest concentrations of people (200-400 individuals) occurred during the spring and fall migrations; afterward, when the caribou were dispersed in their summer or winter ranges, the people broke up into smaller groups (11-41 individuals) to hunt independently with bow and arrow or from canoes with spears.

Tanana, Ingalik, and Chipewyan caribou hunting practices show that a solution that works in one place might not be available or effective in another. In each culture, the objective is the same—to hunt caribou—but local conditions constrain the means used to achieve it and the extent to which it may be achieved. As simulations of human environments and events, stories may be expected to reflect regional constraints on and solutions to common human problems. This is evident in the fact that, when we engage in story worlds, we often find ourselves in an unfamiliar habitat—ancient Mesopotamia, the Carolingian Empire, Norse Scandinavia, etc. This experience is analogous to visiting a foreign country and being unacquainted with the local way of doing things. Misinterpretation may be said to occur when we apply the solutions of our own culture to the problems of the culture we are visiting—that is, when we fail to situate the problem in its proper cultural context. This mistake is understandable: faced with an unfamiliar setting, an individual has only her own experiences, beliefs, and practices to consult when determining the exact nature of the problem at hand and how best to solve it. This is precisely what the Tiv do: knowing nothing of Renaissance England or the Hamlet story world, they diagnose problems and prescribe solutions in terms of their own cultural and ecological milieu. It does not follow from this “misinterpretation” that there are no human universals.

Rules and customs may differ from culture to culture, but the logical structure that underlies them and the motivational systems that guide them are part of the deep structure of human psychology. In the remainder of this essay, I discuss three additional sets of universals that play a significant role in the generation and transmission of human culture, and are implicit in the Tiv interpretation of Hamlet: the ability to reason about social conditionals, to recognize and interpret motivational states, and to predict and manipulate the behavior of conspecifics.

Social Conditionals

Rules of behavioral conduct are one of the universals identified by Brown (Human Universals, 138), and one of the most obvious universals exhibited by the Tiv. From a cognitive perspective, these rules are evidence of a capacity for reasoning about social conditionals (Cosmides, “Logic”; Cosmides & Tooby, “Generation of Culture”; Fiddick et al., “No Interpretation”), such as deontic reasoning (i.e., what is allowed or obligatory) and reasoning about precautions (i.e., safety procedures). Deontic reasoning includes social exchange, obligations, permissions, and threats. An example of social exchange reasoning can be seen when the Tiv demand a story from Bohannan in exchange for all the stories they have told her: “They threatened to tell me no more stories until I told them one of mine” (Bohannan, 45). Further social exchange reasoning is seen when the conversation turns to Ophelia’s marriage prospects. Bohannan summarizes the situation in Tiv terms, explaining that Polonius is worried that Hamlet’s romantic interest in Ophelia might compromise her honor, thereby lowering her bride price. A Tiv elder retorts that “‘a chief’s son would give his mistress’s father enough presents and patronage to more than make up the difference’” (Bohannan, 49). The implicit rule here is that, if a father gives his daughter as mistress to another man, then that man must compensate the father for the consequent diminution of her bride price.

The ability to reason about permissions is seen when the Tiv object to the ghost’s choice of Hamlet as his avenger: according to their custom, important matters such as revenge and punishment are the purview of chiefs and elders. This rule, as proclaimed by one of Bohannan’s informants, is clearly framed as a social contract: “‘If your father’s brother has killed your father, [then] you must appeal to your father’s age-mates; they may avenge him. No man may use violence against his senior relatives’” (Bohannan, 51). Reasoning about social obligations is seen in Tiv rules regarding marriage, which include the practice of the levirate: “’In our country . . . the younger brother marries the elder brother’s widow and becomes the father of his children” (Bohannan, 46). Framed as a social contract, this rule mandates that, “If a man dies, then his brother must marry his widow and provide for his children.”

An integral component of deontic reasoning is the ability to determine when a rule has been broken (Cosmides & Tooby, “Social Exchange”). This, too, is in evidence among the Tiv: as noted above, the Tiv criticize Hamlet for seeking to avenge his father, because this violates their rule proscribing violence against elder kinsmen. Further evidence of the ability to detect rule violations is seen when Bohannan describes the scene in which Hamlet chides Gertrude for her prompt remarriage: Hamlet’s behavior produces “a shocked murmur from everyone” because, according to Tiv rules, “a man should never scold his mother” (Bohannan, 50). In a similar vein, the Tiv condemn Hamlet for his desire to kill Claudius: “‘For a man to raise his hand against his father’s brother and the one who has become his father—that is a terrible thing. The elders ought to let such a man be bewitched’” (Bohannan, 51). This pronouncement evinces another important component of social exchange reasoning: the motivation to punish transgressors. The Tiv believe that insanity is caused by witchcraft and thus believe that Hamlet has been bewitched. As evident in the sentiment that such a man “ought to . . . be bewitched,” they see Hamlet’s madness as fitting punishment for plotting to murder his uncle. They condemn Claudius as well: since the Tiv believe that a person can only be bewitched by his/her paternal relatives, they conclude that Claudius is responsible for Hamlet’s madness. They see Claudius’ action as “wicked” (i.e., a rule violation) and Hamlet’s homicidal designs on him as poetic justice (i.e., punishment): “‘if his father’s brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch Hamlet and make him mad that would be good story indeed, for it would be his fault that Hamlet, being mad, no longer had any sense and thus was ready to kill his father’s brother’” (Bohannan, 51).

Rules of etiquette and hospitality, another human universal (Brown, Human Universals, 139), are also in evidence, as seen in Bohannan’s description of the protocol for serving beer: “I accepted a large calabash full of beer, poured some into a small drinking gourd, and tossed it down. Then I poured some more into the same gourd for the man second in seniority to my host before I handed my calabash over to a young man for further distribution. Important people shouldn’t ladle beer themselves” (Bohannan, 45). Another proscription is expressed in the host’s comment that “‘One does not discuss serious matters when there is beer’” (Bohannan, 44), which can be re-phrased as the rule, “If there is beer, then one does not discuss serious matters.”

The Tiv also have rules pertaining to personal safety, which attests to a capacity for reasoning about hazards (Fiddick, “Deontic Reasoning”). They invoke one of these precautions in their response to Polonius’s death. Summarized by Bohannan, the rule stipulates that a hunter must give an alarm before loosing his arrow, and that any humans in the vicinity must announce their presence: “at the first rustle in the grass an arrow is aimed and ready, and the hunter shouts ‘Game!’ If no human voice answers immediately, the arrow speeds on its way. Like a good hunter, Hamlet had shouted ‘A rat!’” (Bohannan, 50). From both a Tiv and a Western perspective, then, Polonius’ skulking is seen as a potentially hazardous activity: by not identifying himself, he runs the risk of being mistaken for something (game) or someone (a fratricidal uncle) else. The main cultural difference here is that the Tiv parse the danger in terms of the perils inherent in their own environment—the risk of being accidentally killed by a hunter—instead of the risk of being killed for spying. From their perspective, Polonius’ death is his own fault, attributable to his ignorance or disregard of an eminently sound precaution: “’That Polonius truly was a fool and a man who knew nothing!’” (Bohannan, 50). Bohannan concedes that many Westerners agree with this assessment (Bohannan, 49)–yet another continuity between the two “different” interpretations of the play.

Emotions

Emotions are motivational mechanisms designed through the process of natural selection to guide responses to environmental stimuli in ways that, in ancestral environments, tended to increase fitness (Tooby & Cosmides, “Past”). In other words, emotions are adaptations. Thus, we would expect all normally-developing humans to exhibit emotions, and to exhibit a similar set of emotions. Tellingly, pain, sexual attraction and desire, and other emotional states are among the human universals identified by Brown (Human Universals, 135). We would also expect developmentally normal humans to exhibit similar emotional responses to a given adaptive problem. Snakes are a case in point: venomous snakes were a recurrent feature of the environments inhabited by early hominins (and their non-human primate predecessors), and most humans readily acquire avoidance-based emotional responses (e.g., fear, revulsion, wariness) to these animals (Russell, Snake; Brown, Human Universals, 115). A related capacity, the ability to infer the emotional states of others using cues such as facial expression and tone of voice, is instrumental to the maintenance of the complex cooperative networks that characterize human life, and is also included on Brown’s list of human universals (Human Universals, 135). Research on facial expressions has identified at least six universally recognized emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust (Eckman et al., “Facial Displays of Emotion”; Eckman, “Facial Expression”). Brown includes contempt on this list, and notes that the coyness response is also common—and commonly understood–cross-culturally (Human Universals, 134). The use of tone of voice to communicate meaning is a universal feature of human languages (Brown, Human Universals, 131). Characterized by Bolinger as “a nonarbitrary, sound-symbolic system with intimate ties to facial expression and bodily gesture, and conveying, underneath it all, emotions and attitudes” (Intonation, 1), intonation appears to be designed to transmit information about the speaker’s affective state.

All of these capacities are exhibited in the Tiv response to Hamlet. The most obvious capacity they exhibit is the ability to recognize different emotions and attribute emotional states to conspecifics. Bohannan tells the story in the Tiv language, and often explains character motivation in terms of emotion; thus, their language clearly contains words for the affective states evinced by the characters in the play, indicating not only that Tiv culture includes the concept of emotion, but that Tiv and Western emotional repertoires are consonant with one another. This can be seen in the Tiv rationale for a leader having multiple wives: “It was better . . . for a chief to have many wives and sons who would help him hoe his farms and feed his people; then everyone loved the chief who gave much and took nothing” (Bohannan, 47; emphasis added). Similarly, when Bohannan explains why Polonius eavesdrops on Gertrude and Hamlet’s conversation, they appear to have no difficulty understanding a mother’s love for her children: “‘The great chief told Hamlet’s mother to find out from her son what he knew. But because a woman’s children are always first in her heart, he had the important elder Polonius hide behind a cloth that hung against the wall of Hamlet’s mother’s sleeping hut’” (Bohannan, 50; emphasis added).

Bohannan references a broad spectrum of emotions, with which the Tiv show no signs of being unfamiliar. For example, her discussion of Gertrude’s hasty remarriage references sadness and grief: “‘The son Hamlet was very sad because his mother had married again so quickly. There was no need for her to do so, and it is our custom for a widow not to go to her next husband until she has mourned for two years’” (Bohannan, 47). She references regret—or its absence–when she tells them that Claudius “‘was not sorry that Hamlet had killed Polonius’” (Bohannan, 51). Fear is referenced multiple times—for example, when she explains that Horatio and his companions were “‘troubled and afraid’” (Bohannan, 46) when they saw the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and when she explains that Hamlet “‘behaved so oddly’” toward Ophelia that “‘he frightened her’” (Bohannan, 49). Her summary of the play-within-a-play alludes to sexual desire, ambition, guilt, and distrust: she explains that Hamlet asked a visiting storyteller to tell Claudius and his household a tale “‘about a man who had poisoned his brother because he desired his brother’s wife and wished to be chief himself. Hamlet was sure the great chief could not hear the story without making a sign if he was indeed guilty, and then he would discover whether his dead father had told him the truth’” (Bohannan, 50). The Tiv themselves reference emotional states in their interpretations of the characters’ behavior. For example, believing that Hamlet jumps into Ophelia’s grave to prevent Laertes from selling her body to the witches, they attribute Hamlet’s actions to envy and Laertes’ response to rage: “‘Hamlet prevented him because the chief’s heir, like a chief, does not wish any other man to grow rich and powerful. Laertes would be angry, because he would have killed his sister without benefit to himself’” (Bohannan, 52). The Tiv even evince an appreciation for irony, as seen in their “applause” for the old man’s judgment of Claudius: “‘if his father’s brother had indeed been wicked enough to bewitch Hamlet and make him mad that would be good story indeed, for it would be his fault that Hamlet, being mad, no longer had any sense and thus was ready to kill his father’s brother’” (Bohannan, 51). As these examples illustrate, the Tiv clearly understand the power of emotions such as ambition, rage, and desire, and the causal relationship between emotion and behavior.

The Tiv also exhibit the ability to infer the emotional states of others. At one point in her narration, for example, Bohannan feels herself getting angry, and tells her audience, “‘If you don’t like the story, I’ll stop’” (Bohannan, 52). The response from the senior elder—an obvious attempt at appeasement–indicates that he has accurately interpreted her feelings: “The old man made soothing noises and himself poured me some more beer” (Bohannan, 52). The opposite is also true: Bohannan is able to make accurate assessments of her audience’s mental state. For example, when she agrees to tell them a story, she notes that the men sit back to listen, “puffing contentedly” on their pipes (Bohannan, 46). Indeed, over the course of her narration, she repeatedly gauges audience interest and attitude using facial expression, tone of voice, and/or body language. The range of facial expressions she describes is impressive. For example, she reports that that “the old man beamed” (Bohannan, 46) with approval upon hearing that Claudius married his brother’s widow, and that he “frowned” (Bohannan, 48) at his wife for asking a stupid question. When she explains that that there was no need for Gertrude to remarry, she notes that “no one looked convinced” (Bohannan, 47), and when she attempts to explain that the king’s ghost is not an omen, she notes that the “audience looked as confused as I sounded” (Bohannan, 48). She also monitors the glances exchanged between audience members, noting, for example, that the “second elder looked triumphantly at the first” (Bohannan, 46) when the former’s interpretation was vindicated, and that the “old men looked at each other in supreme disgust” (Bohannan, 50) upon hearing the cause of Polonius’ death. Similarly, she monitors the glances directed expressly at her. For example, when Bohannan accepts the old man’s invitation to join in the beer drinking, she notes that he looks at her “approvingly” (Bohannan, 45). And, after explaining that Hamlet changed Claudius’ orders so that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were killed instead, she remarks: “I encountered a reproachful glare from one of the men whom I had told undetectable forgery was not merely immoral but beyond human skill” (Bohannan, 51).

The use of gesture and body language to infer attitude and emotional state is also in evidence. For example, Bohannan notes that there was “a general shaking of heads round the circle” (Bohannan, 46) in disapproval of a son exacting vengeance for his father’s murder. She also monitors her audience’s attentional state, noting for example that her “audience suddenly became much more attentive” (Bohannan, 49) when she began discussing Hamlet’s madness. She is particularly alert to tone of voice, noting a “reproachful” (Bohannan, 51) comment, a “growled” (Bohannan, 48) answer, a “bewildered voice” (Bohannan, 49), and a “babble of disbelief” (Bohannan, 48). Her comment that Hamlet scolded his mother elicits “a shocked murmur from everyone” (Bohannan, 50), and an elder’s pronouncement that Claudius was wicked to bewitch his nephew elicits a “murmur of applause” (Bohannan, 51). Bohannan’s descriptions reference a broad range of emotions, and in some cases are highly nuanced, as seen when she notes that her host addressed her “with that insincere, but courteous, agreement one extends to the fancies of the young, ignorant, and superstitious” (Bohannan, 48).

Clearly, Bohannan and the Tiv have no trouble interpreting each other’s tone of voice, body language, or emotional states. The main interpretive difference between the two cultures lies in the motives attributed to the characters, which the Tiv parse in terms of local constraints and practices. For the most part, however, the Tiv respond to the characters in the same manner that Westerners do, expressing sympathy for some and antipathy for others, and understanding their behavior in terms of their motivational state. This is arguably the most remarkable cross-cultural continuity evinced in the essay: Tiv and Westerners alike respond to story characters as if they were actual human beings, assuming not only that they experience emotions, but that they experience the same set of emotions that humans do.

Machiavellian Intelligence

Because humans are highly social animals, one of the main obstacles to the attainment of fitness-related goals is other humans. Resources are finite; consequently, competition for access to food, territory, mates, allies, and other necessities has always been a feature of human environments. The selection pressure exerted by this competition led to the evolution of adaptations for manipulating the beliefs and behavior of conspecifics (Jolly, “Lemur”; Humphrey, “Social”). Commonly referred to by the shorthand term “Machiavellian intelligence” (Byrne & Whiten, Machiavellian Intelligence; Whiten & Byrne, Machiavellian Intelligence II), this capacity includes the ability to dissemble and deceive, and the attendant ability to predict human behavior. This capacity is evinced in the intrigues that pervade Hamlet, as well as the facility with which the Tiv understand these machinations and generate alternative schemes of their own.

The Tiv have no problem understanding that humans engage in intrigue or understanding the nature of this behavior, and readily follow the maneuvers deployed by the characters to achieve their various ends. Consider the plots and counterplots launched by Hamlet and Claudius, beginning with the play-within-a-play. When Bohannan explains that Hamlet’s motive is to “‘discover whether his dead father had told him the truth,’” the old man asks “with deep cunning, ‘Why should a father lie to his son?’” (Bohannan, 50). The Tiv understand both, Claudius’ plan to send his nephew away “‘with letters to a chief of a far country, saying that Hamlet should be killed,’” and Hamlet’s counter-move in which he “‘changed the writing on their papers, so that the chief killed his age mates instead’” (Bohannan, 51). Even more telling is their response to Claudius’ subsequent plot to encourage Laertes to challenge Hamlet to a duel. When Bohannan explains that “‘Hamlet’s mother drank the poisoned beer that the chief meant for Hamlet in case he won the fight’” (Bohannan, 53), one of the elders corrects her interpretation. In so doing, he envisions an alternative plot: “‘The poison Hamlet’s mother drank was obviously meant for the survivor of the fight, whichever it was. If Laertes had won, the great chief would have poisoned him, for no one would know that he arranged Hamlet’s death. Then, too, he need not fear Laertes’ witchcraft’” (Bohannan, 53).

This penetrating insight is not a fluke: another example is seen when a debate arises concerning the ghost, which the Tiv interpret as a “false omen” sent to Hamlet. One elder argues that Hamlet should have consulted a diviner, who “could have told him how his father died, if he really had been poisoned’” (Bohannan, 50). Another elder disagrees: “‘Because his father’s brother was a great chief, one-who-sees-the-truth might therefore have been afraid to tell it. I think it was for that reason that a friend of Hamlet’s father—a witch and an elder—sent an omen so his friend’s son would know’” (Bohannan, 50). The Tiv exhibit an equally Machiavellian view of Laertes’ motives. Bohannan explains that, because Polonius was worried that his son might behave in a prodigal fashion while in Paris, “‘he sent one of his servants to . . . to spy out what Laertes was doing’” (Bohannan, 49). One of the elders offers the following interpretation of Laertes’ behavior when, upon his return, he learns of Ophelia’s death and visits her grave:

“Polonius knew his son would get into trouble, and so he did. He had many fines to pay for fighting, and debts from gambling. But he had only two ways of getting money quickly. One was to marry off his sister at once, but it is difficult to find a man who will marry a woman desired by the son of a chief. For if the chief’s heir commits adultery with your wife, what can you do? Only a fool calls a case against a man who will someday be his judge. Therefore Laertes had to take the second way: he killed his sister by witchcraft, drowning her so he could secretly sell her body to the witches.” (Bohannan, 52)

As these and many other examples in the essay illustrate, the Tiv exhibit a keen understanding of humans as political animals. They are neither surprised by the duplicitous behavior exhibited by the characters, nor incapable of generating original schemes on their own.

Future Research

Although it would be an ambitious project, one obvious avenue of inquiry would be a cross-cultural comparison of emotional responses to the main conflicts in the play. This could be done by analyzing a cross-cultural sample of audience responses to Hamlet. For each culture, audience response could be operationalized as the most highly cited or most commonly taught interpretation—that is, the within-culture interpretation for which there is the highest consensus among literary scholars. Since Shakespeare’s plays have been translated into many languages and subjected to international academic scrutiny, the assembly of such a sample is not outside the bounds of possibility. Regardless of culture of origin, we would expect these consensus interpretations to evince similar attitudes toward key behaviors in the story, such as murder, incest, adultery, and betrayal. Specifically, we would expect these behaviors to be associated with a negative valence, and to be explicitly or implicitly characterized as antisocial conduct. We would further expect the targets of such behaviors to be seen as aggrieved parties and, on this logic, would expect to find rules aimed at regulating these behaviors and overt or tacit approval of the punishment of transgressors (e.g., via shaming, ostracism, execution). Finally, we would expect audiences to attribute motivational states to the story characters, to attribute the same motivational states to the characters that they attribute to actual humans, and to understand these motivational states as the impetus for the characters’ behavior. Cross-cultural consonance in these affective responses would constitute compelling evidence that “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over” (Bohannan, 44).

[See also Patrick Colm Hogan, “Comments on Scalise Sugiyama“).]

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