Is There an Instinct for Poetry?

Is There an Instinct for Poetry?
Vico’s Poetic Wisdom between Archeology of Knowledge and the Challenge of Neurosciences

A lecture by
Alessandro Carrera, University of Houston

In ENGLISH

An instinct can be understood as an inherent tendency within a living organism to respond to specific stimuli with a complex behavioral pattern. If, as Vico suggests, all origins are inherently poetic, this implies that there is a rhythmic and sonic response to certain conditions to which the human mind-brain gravitates. This primordial response, over millennia, will later be conceptualized as “poetry.” Thus, it is crucial to differentiate between three distinct phases: 1) the origin of poetry and the “poetry of the origin,” which remains inadequately articulated due to its status as the foundational impulse that will eventually give rise to language itself; 2) poetry as the fully realized power of language, a phenomenon that aesthetics of the sublime seek to encapsulate; and 3) poetry as a “debased” literary genre, wherein “expressiveness” has supplanted the original transformative power of “saying.”