Darwinian Perception and Evolutionary Aesthetics

Abstract

In this chapter I focus on how evolutionary theory challenged the preexisting ideas of perception and aesthetics, and how Galdós's writing charts this upheaval in aesthetic ideology, centring predominantly on the apparent clash between Platonic and Darwinian principles. Furthermore, Galdós's choice of metaphor, particularly in relation to the body, is explored, as are his attempts to understand his own creativity within evolutionary and transformational terms. However, when considering how a sense of aesthetics may have been developed, it is necessary to note that in this case (that is when dealing with the natural sciences in the late nineteenth century), the very means of perception of beauty and of Art was itself under fresh examination. I therefore start with an analysis of that area of the Darwinian debate related to humanity's most obvious means of perception, the human eye, and how this debate had both immediate and less direct influences on Galdós's fiction.