Recensione a: J. Carroll, Literary Darwinism. Evolution, Human Nature and Literature, New York-London, Routledge, 2004. AA. VV., The Literary Animal. Evolution and the Nature of Narrative, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2004

While Darwinism still faces incredible and scientifically unacceptable skepticism as a naturalistic theory about the origins of living species, ‘natural selection’ and ’struggle for survival’ keep being abused as any concept can be in the field of human sciences and, lately, even in the humanities, namely the theory of the literature. Alvin Lieberman wisely observed that the evolution of speech is certainly a biological event, whereas the discovery of literature is definitely one of a cultural kind. Accordingly, self proclaimed literary darwinists adopt a very deterministic approach to the Evolutionary Theory, never maintained by Darwin himself, offering a series of «evolutionary fairy tales», as Stephen Jay Gould might have very likely called them.