The Bactra Review Explaining Culture
See in particular the last essay in the second edition of Franco Moretti's
Signs Taken for Wonders: Essays in the Sociology of Literary Forms
(London: Verso, 1988), and his The Modern Epic: The World System from
Goethe to Garcia Marquez (London: Verso, 1996), passim.
(The essay includes a number of odd misunderstandings about natural evolution,
but these do not greatly harm his argument as it applies to literature.)
This interest in evolution is surely related to the fact that Moretti was
almost the only dues-paying advanced literary critic to take the right side in
the Sokal affair. (In fact, I can't think of any others.)