The Literary Mind.pdf

168 THE LITERARY MIND
environment of adaptiveness that must be part of an adaptive account. In the
parabolic environment, the lone genetically grammatical person would be surrounded
by a grammatical community and would have an advantage over other
members. Over time, genetic specialization in the species might take up some of
the responsibility previously shouldered by parabolic mechanisms in the individual
mind.
The view that parable explains the origin of language makes it possible to
conceive of parabolic thinking and genetic specialization for grammar (if there
is any) as historically connected in the evolution of the species and commensurate
and reinforcing in the contemporary individual mind. Whether genetic specialization
for grammar exists, to what degree it might exist, how it might be
expressed in the individual brain under development, and how it might cooperate
with other conceptual processes are all open empirical questions. But parable
alone, without genetic specialization, gives us what we need for the origin of
language.
The story I have offered reverses the view that language is built up from the sober
to the exotic; that out of syntactic phrase structures, one builds up language; that
out of language, one builds up narrative; that out of narrative, literary narrative
is born as a special performance; and that out of literary narrative comes parable.
It works the other way around. With story, projection, and their powerful
combination in parable, we have a cognitive basis from which language can originate.
The dynamic processes of parable are basic to the construction of meaning
and the construction of language. Story precedes grammar. Projection precedes
grammar. Parable precedes grammar. Language follows from these mental capacities
as a consequence; it is their complex product. Language is the child of the
literary mind.
Parable is the root of the human mind—of thinking, knowing, acting, creating,
and plausibly even of speaking.