Literature is Only a Theory
by Julian Onions

Intelligent design has now been found in a number of fields outside of science, and the new target is literature. "Some works of literature are so well put together that we have to suppose an intelligent inspriation behind them." said a spokesman for IDL (Intelligent Design in Literature Institute).

Consider the works of Shakespeare for instance. It has long been argued that "Shakespeare" was not the original author, of the plays and sonnets. Some have proposed Francis Bacon as a more realistic proposition, but even that has problems. How could he, a relative nobody, in medieval times, come up with some of the greatest works of literature ever known.

We just don't know how these were written. No modern writer has managed to reproduce a similar work, so it's obvious there was a supernatural designer present. Once proposed, we find all manner of works that were obviously inspired by an intelligent designer. Chaucer is an obvious candidate, as are some of the works of Milton. Obviously the core candidates are such bestsellers as the Bible, and the Qur'an, who's very authors admit to direct intervention in their composition.

It is difficult to explain a number of literary mechanism using current criticism models, for example the appearance of assonance, the introduction of chiasmus, and the origins of verisimilitude. "No one really knows where these things come from" the spokesman said, "the literary evidence shows no transitional forms of the limerick for instance. Using the standard model of literary derivation, we would expect to see 2, 3, and 4 line comic verse, but the archives show not one shred of such paper. The burden of proof is on the literary community to prove that we are wrong, they have had things there own way for too long, and things just don't ring true".

The idea that some Greek literature clearly shows early forms of some of the devices is also apparently explainable. "These texts might appear to be ancient Greek, but really that is just an artifact of the flawed literary dating techniques. We disagree with the current model of literary dating and our studies show that we can give quite a late date for many so called Greek classics. Aristophanes, for instance, is shown by our literary team, working in a state-of-the-art modern library, to be probably no earlier than the 17th century, and possibly later. "No one of us was there when Herodotus wrote his histories were they?".

A number of professors of literature have hit back saying that the theory had no merits, makes no predictions about things like stanza length, and that the plot devices used by authors like Shakespeare are in principle well understood, whilst admitting the fine detail of the prose can not be reconstructed from basic everyday language by known processes of editing. "We know how to write in Shakespeare's style, as long as we start with a suitable iambic pentameter." When pressed, they had to admit that so far they don't know the exact mechanism by which iambic pentameter came about, although there were several possible blank verse precursor candidates.

"This is just bad literary criticism, it doesn't provide any answers to current philosophical questions about style, and merely posits that there stories we can't possibly write. We are happy to admit that we don't know how to write all possible stories currently, but recent research, including the use of cladistics has shown we know mechanisms by which we can write proto-stories".

IDL advocates dismiss this, stating no one even knows how written language came about from a few scrawled cave paintings in any case.

Its a powerful argument, and one that needs to be looked at say the IDL supporters. They are not asking for a ban on literary criticism in the schoolroom, but simply that equal time be given in the English class to intelligent composition. Children should be taught that some works can be written, and some have to be inspired. They can be given the facts, and then come to their own balanced view of what novels can be written.

Stay tuned for next weeks revelation, "Intelligent Composing - did Bach have no byte of his own?".