PO Box 440140 Aurora CO 80014-0140
Title: The Evolutionary Sequence in Tragedy and the Bible
Author: Leonard Moss
Imprint: The Davies Group, Publishers
soft cover
232 pp.
USD 24.00
ISBN 978-1934542040
February 2009
Of the many available books that celebrate the Bible, Shakespeare, and Charles Darwin, The Evolutionary Sequence is the first study to show their continuity.
The technical details of literary practice—narrative patterns, sentence constructions, and metaphorical designs—project a paradox informing natural selection. In
order to flourish, both nature’s organisms and civilization’s actors require stability; at crucial times they also require flexibility. They must preserve existing bonds
or boundaries and simultaneously adjust to environmental and social stress. The welfare of a species, or a character representing some traditional mode of
conduct, depends on the resolution of a contest between constancy and deviation.
Moss shows how Darwin’s observations in The Origin of Species on natural variation, adaptation, and selection are relevant to the unfolding of ethical and religious
values in dramatic and biblical landmarks, such as The Hebrew Torah and the Books of Ecclesiastes, Job, and Matthew, as well as plays by Shakespeare, O’Neill, and
Beckett, that display an evolutionary sequence shaping belief systems as well as organic structures.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1.
The Evolutionary Sequence
Chapter 2.
The Darwinian Covenant
Chapter 3.
Two Hebrew Skeptics
Chapter 4.
Jesus the Adapter
Chapter 5.
The Tragic Impasse: Shakespearean Constancy and Deviation
Chapter 6.
Darwin’s Paradox and O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night
Chapter 7.
Waiting for Godot: The End of Evolution?
Conclusion
Notes
Index
About the Author
Leonard Moss is professor emeritus of comparative literature at the State University of New York at Geneseo. He has served as editor of the journal of the
Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association in Providence, and as Fulbright Professor of American Literature at the University of Athens and the Foreign
Studies University in Beijing. Previous publications include Arthur Miller: The Excess of Heroism in Tragic Drama; and a memoir, China Was Paradise! China Was
Hell!