The instinct of literature. An approach to literary activity from the theory of evolution

This article aims to discuss the possibility of thinking about Literature from the perspective of the Theory of Evolution. We will therefore make a critical exposition of the possibility that literary activity has to do with innate faculties, product of natural selection and human evolution. We will do so using three main authors who have directly approached this idea: Joseph Carroll, Steven Pinker, and Denis Dutton. In order to contextualize the problem, we will put their ideas in relation to some literary ideas (from literary authors and literary theorists) that have tried inquire about the nature of the poetic or literary facts. Among other consequences, the proposal has implications on the debate about the relations between nature and culture, that is: what is cultural in the human being, and therefore relative in his or her conduct, what belongs to a common human nature, and also if an activity so obviously cultural as Literature can be considered in the light of the natural qualities of the human being as an animal species product of a sophisticated process of evolution.