A Compaignye of Sondry Folk: Mereology, Medieval Poetics and Contemporary Evolutionary Narrative in Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale

摘要

All too often, for reasons too variegated to debate here, the Humanities and Sciences are considered opposites rather than partners in pedagogy. Whatever C. P. Snow's intentions, this perceived antagonism was not helped by his famous Two Cultures lecture; but whatever its origins, the dichotomy is false. In "A Compaignye of Sondry Folk" Janine Rogers provides further evidence of the shared inheritance and goals of the Sciences and the Humanities, especially medieval literature. Rogers is able to do this partly through her own expertise and partly through analysis of Richard Dawkins's The Ancestor's Tale (2004). Dawkins, a controversial figure and former Chair of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, channels Darwin and Chaucer to offer a history of evolution-cum-warning against overly rigid anthropocentrism. To illustrate his thesis Dawkins adopts Chaucer's model of pilgrimage and storytelling to offer a "[b]ackward chronology in search of ancestors," ultimately to "a single concestor [sic] of all surviving life" (Dawkins 6-7). For her part, Rogers explores why the Canterbury Tales might play such a key role in this modern scientific inquiry. The result is a detailed and convincing elucidation of Dawkins's use of medieval poetics.