The evolution of English poetry

Abstract

An evolutionary theory of artistic and literary change is described. It is argued that the basic trends in the history of an art form are a product of the continual necessity to produce works that are novel. In order to produce a novel response it is hypothetically necessary to regress from normal abstract waking consciousness to an associative or primary process state of consciousness. Thus, to be more original, one must regress further. Consequently, successive poets should show more and more evidence of this regression. Over time, literary vocabulary should become more saturated with words indicative of primary process thought. If this pattern is in the service of increasing originality, indices of incongruity and diversity should also vary with time in a monotonically increasing fashion. Results of a computer-based content analytic study of a series of texts by 88 English poets born between 1490 and 1949 and a control series of non-literary prose written between 1770 and 1970 are described. Analyses of the series of poetic texts reveal a number of statistically significant results in conformity with theoretical predictions. Indices of primary process content, concreteness, and lexical diversity increase linearly across time in the poetic texts. None of these variables exhibit significant temporal trends in the control texts. Thus, the trends seem to be specific to poetry.