Sociology and LiteratureAuthor(s): Trevor NobleReviewed work(s):Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1976), pp. 211-224Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/590028 .Accessed: 14/06/2012 02:24

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British jrournal of Sociolop Volume 27 J%umber 2 XUM 1976

Trevor Noble

Sociology and literature

I

Literature presents the different sociological perspectives from which it has been considered with rather different problems. To take the currently most seriously and extensively cultivated perspectives in the sociology of literature, fictions present Marxists with problems in the relation of superstructure and base for the vulgar, or of explicating the dialectical dynamics of alienated expression for the more idealist. For phenomenological sociologists fiction is perhaps a rival activity or at any rate one which is not problematic in the way it appears either to the materialist or the empiricist for whom the creation and consumption of fiction requires explanation. Besides these positions contributions to the sociology of literature have been made from the points of view of structuralism, functionalism and critical sociology. This list is probably not exhaustive, nor are the perspectives mutually exclusive. For all of the now conventional derision of empiricism one encounters in this area, however, there is remarkably little of it about. It seems a pity that this should be so, firstly as its absence detracts from the plausibility of much critical comment but, secondly and more seriously, as the exist- ence of more work in such a vein might provide an evidential basis for some cumulative argument in addition to the sometimes brilliant but divergent insights which constitute the bulk of the discussion so far. It is not that one wants a mere extension of so-called 'fact gathering' but rather that some attempt is required to refine variables and test out the hypothesized connections between them. Few of the extant theor- etical discussions in the sociology of literature will stand up to this treatment, not so much because they are wrong but because they are vague at crucial points or seem to predicate relationships which in the last analysis are not accessible to sociological investigation.

Now it may be that the approach advocated here is too crude for the literary phenomena which are proposed as its subject matter and that the empiricist approach is incapable of revealing anything that is im- portant about the creation or appreciation of literature. It may well be so, but if that should prove to be the outcome then we should have learned something important about literature which can only be for the present mere suppqsition while at the same time some of the limits of sociology, or at least of some kinds of sociology, would have been

2 I I

Trevor J\lobte 2I2

usefully defined in practice. At any rate such an approach has scarcely been suggested before, let alone tried.

In this paper I propose to explore some of the limitations of sociol- ogical discussions of literature with special reference to the novel. The novel is important not simply because it has received most attention but because it, more clearly than other art forms, raises issues about the relation of the fictional construct and the social context within which the processes of creation and interpretation occur. After outlining some of the criticisms which I think may be levelled at the great bulk of sociological discussion on the subject I have tried to indicate in outline an alternative approach which incorporates some of the desiderata of a useful theory. On the one hand this approach offers the possibility of a genuinely cumulative accretion of sociological knowledge about the relationship between literature and society; on the other, it may indicate sometliing of the limits of an authentically sociological understanding here.

II

Sociologists have, considering their numbers, contributed relatively little to our understanding or ideas about the world. Ideas about the relationships between language and social reality or about the reality of appearances and the perspectival nature of social knowledge have been originated and explored in the twentieth century theatre by Pirandello, Jarry, Ionesco and N. F. Simpson and in novels by writers as diverse as Nabokov, Joyce, Flann O'Brian, Nigel Dennis, Kafka and Joyce Cary, as well as, of course, by Sterne in the eighteenth century with greater insight and thoroughness than any soi-disant sociological commentary on such topics has so far managed to attain.l Except when they are talking specifically about social processes there is nothing sociologists might say which might not as well be said and with as much claim to public attention by anybody else.2 Sociological approaches to literature are therefore likely to prove illuminating, other than by accident, only to the extent that they deal with its social aspects. But as Escarpit has observed, 'reading is at the same time social and asocial' and for most people it may be regarded primarily as an escape inasmuch as for a time it involves them cognitively and often affectively within a fictional situation rather than in the immediate and practical circumstances of their real lives.3 The relationship between these situations is crucial to our understanding of literature in society. However the main emphasis in Escarpit's discussion is that this relationship exists within a specifically social process of communication. 'Each and every literary fact pre- supposes a writer, a book, and a reader; or, in general terms, an author, a product and a public.'4 Here we are directly confronted with a range of sociological questions about action and response, behaviour and its determinants, perceived meanings and their context. The literary fact

Sociology and literature XI3

for Escarpit is essentially social. 'To know what a book is presupposes a knowledge of how it has been read.'5 In drawing our attention to the relational aspect of reading and specifically the triadic relationship between author, book and reader, Escarpit opens important paths for sociological exploration and has himself done much to map what was previously terra incognita. However, he does not offier us an account of the central relationship between the fictional and the real world of social experience and in consequence his sociology of literature remains ex- ternal to the literary fact itself.

This central problem has been at the heart of the great bulk of work in the sociology of literature which has been inspired by the tradition of Marxist thought. There are of course a number of distinct but over- lapping approaches which are currently influential focussing on this problem. Rather than reviewing yet again the work of each author or group of authors, Lukacs, Goldmann, etc., pointing out obscurities, praising their insights, I propose to adopt a more summary approach. I will consider three main theoretical defects one or other of which flaw each of the arguments which have been developed within this approach to the sociology of literature. In what seems to me to be an ascending order of importance these theoretical flaws may be noted as follows:

(a) the inadequacy of the theory of literature as a reflection of social reality;

(b) the dependence of these sociologies on a priori aesthetic judg- ments;

(c) the dilemma they face between elitism and/or tautology.

(a) The theory of reflection

Most of the writers within the Marxist tradition have never succeeded in liberating themselves from the archaisms of the Hegelian metaphysic (some have ardently cultivated them) and are, in consequence, confined by the mechanistic notion of reflection in attempting to understand the relationship between the work and its author's social context while too little attention is paid to the communicative aspects of the literary viewed as a social activity. Though arguments about ideological dis- tortion bulk large amongst the criticism in this tradition, it is never adequately explained how the 'optics' of reflection work. The image of man as the mirror of society is persuasive but enigmatic. Reflection remains an image, it does not become a concept. It is almost self-evident that the mind of a writer does not function in precisely the way a polished surface affects light but these accounts stop short here. Terms like distortion or refraction merely impart a spurious precision to the metaphor. Even Lukacs, in his new introduction to the I968 edition of History and Class Consciousness6 only succeeds in reconfusing what had seemed a satisfactory explosion of the concept in I922.7 For the most part little of explanatory value has been added by sociological accounts

Trevor Joble 2I4

to the work of scholars like Raymond Williams writing about the social context of literature within a purely literary convention from the Marxist point of view.8

Lukacs has argued that it is not the content of the work which is significant so much as the categories of thought deployed, perhaps un- consciously on the part of the author, which reflect the historical cir- cumstances of his creativity. This is clearly a more subtle approach but the relationship between work and context remains a mechanistic one and does not accommodate either the problem of variability between individuals either as authors or readers let alone that of creative originality.

Goldmann's genetic structuralism does not so much solve the problem as side-step it by giving it a different name. Instead of the work re- flecting the social world of its author Goldmann discerns homologies between the structure of forms inherent in the work and the structural properties of the most important aspects of the social world.9 While this has unquestionably produced some distinguished and highly per- ceptive criticism such as his discussion of Jansenism in his work on Racine and Pascal,l° as a method the detection of structural homologies is lacking in objectivity. The difficulty, however, is not merely that the discernment of homologies cannot be systematized as some kind of positivistic methodology but that the relationship proposed between the real and fictive worlds remains obscure.ll The notion of structural homology is an improvement on that of reflection only in being less obviously unhelpful. The pursuit of formal structures of meaning within literature and within social formations fails to explain why men find the creation and exploration of fictions a satisfying activity.l2

The failure to explicate the connection between literary work and its social context in other than superficial terms is an important limitation of the Marxian perspeclive as so far developed in this field. It accounts for the inability of Marxists to distinguish between the various responses of socially similarly located literary men to the same historical ex- perience, or the diffierential responsiveness among those of similar social location and education to literary products in general.

Following Trotsky and Voronski however, Alan Swingewood has opposed Lukacs' as well as more vulgar notions of reflection. 'The sociology of literature,' he concludes, 'must treat literature as literature and creative talent as creative. Sociology and literature are not identical practices. They must be treated accordingly.'l3 He conceives of soci- ology as an analytic and constructive activity while art is concerned with the discovery and elaboration of images. While there would not appear to be anything peculiarly Marxist in making this distinction,l4 it does represent an important emphasis in its criticism of a great deal of reductionist sociology. It both rejects the crude reduction of litera- ture to exemplifications of supposedly sociological analysis and at the same time asserts the distinctiveness of a sociological understanding

Sociology and literature 2 I 5

different from the essentially literary, which much current phenomeno- logically orientated work, seemingly in pursuit of the appearances behind reality, at least implicitly, denies. In offiering only alternative readings of situations they contribute nothing discernibly and distinc- tively sociological to an already sophisticated literary understanding of literary phenomena. We must turn elsewhere for a sociology of litera- ture.

Yet in quite properly clearing away reflection as an adequate model for a sociological understanding of the relationship between the real and fictional worlds, Swingewood leaves the scene a tidier but no better illuminated one. The problem of explaining the relationship remains and if we are to avoid the inference that sociology, in the distinctive sense that he intends, has no place here at all, it is a problem that must be solved.

(b) Aesthetzc a prioris

Lukacs has de facto limited his attention to acknowledged examples of great literature.l5 Goldmann has rationalized this sociologically re- stricted focus more explicitly.l6 He sees the task of the sociologist as an attempt to trace the necessary connections between the fictional work and the world view towards which a social group is tending since it is the social group, he argues, which in the last resort is the true subject ot creation.l7 Average individuals are too complex to be representative of their group, to typify its historical significance clearly enough for the sociologist to be able to explore their connections with their socio- historical circumstances.l8 The average novel does not achieve the purity or coherence of structure which permits the sociologist to observe its homologous relation to the structure of the possible consciousness of the social group whose tendencies it expresses.l9

We can agree that the average characteristics of a group are not common to all its members. The important point here however is not that Goldmann's method in selecting only the great work (aesthetically) excludes and is able to say little or nothing about the mass of texts of less than outstanding literary merit but that it is flawed as a general methodological position either by circularity of reasoning or by a con- tradiction. Firstly, there is the problem of deciding upon which work can be analysed. Aesthetic judgments are historically variable; consider the critical reputations of Fielding or George Eliot over the past century or Hemingway or Somerville and Ross in the last two decades. Unless the sociological historian is to be only the apologist of the aesthetician he must conduct his analysis before he can decide on the typicality of the work rather than after. The choice of an cavre which identifies itself with tendencies fundamental in one way or another to its time and historical circumstance assumes the result of the study before it is begun. Secondly, if it is only such writers who can be understood by the sociologist because only the work of the typical crystallizes the sociologist's typification of

2 I 6 Erevor J%oble

his group's experience, then the sociologist must presumably be able to

discern that experience in the record of less 'typical' and more saverage'

or as I would prefer more ordinary, individuals. But while the person

who can typitr a group may be exceptional in the unalloyed coherence

of his thinking, the exceptionally coherent individual does not necessarily

typify a group. If the sociologist can only explain the creation of an historically

typical work then the sociologist must be able to recognise such a work,

distinguishing it from other work of lesser achievement. Yet the criterion

of validity Goldmann employs is the capacity of the writer to crystallize

the experience of his group with an uncontaminated coherence not

reached by the ordinary individual with his complex loyalties and un-

assimilated experiences. There is some sense in which the group must

be defined by the ideas inherent in the work unless he is to contradict

himself by allowing the sociologist in fact to understand the ordinary

members of the group sufficiently to be able to recognize the typicality

of the creator whose work he can recognize as valid. In his great study of Racine it is perhaps significant therefore that

he was concerned with the manifestation in the drama of the world

vision of a religious sect agroupdefined, that is, byits beliefsratherthan

a group defined (social) structurally in termsn for instance, of its class

position. It is also not without signiScance in this regard that in taking

Racine as his first subject he focussed upon the most formal of dramatic

Trsodes in which dramaturgical conventions and mythic symbolization

predominate over character or humanistic relationships in contrast with

the work, for instance, of Shakespeare or even Moliere. In his ap-

proaches to the modern novel his concern for the plight of the French

left-intellectual is similarly sociologically constricting. The inferences

concerning the place of the novel in contemporary culture he draws

from his explicatory account of Malraux would seem improbable when

one considers the possible paralleIs and divergences apparent in the

novels of Pasternak or Graham Greenen while for Robbe-Grillet the

non-convergent epistemologies of Nabokov and even Norman Mailer

are suggestive perspectives excluded by his constricted methodology.

But this is to verge upon the third of the issues I wish to consider in this

section.

(c) The dilemma of elitism or tautology

Like Goldmann, Zeraffa approaches the novel in a way which is essen-

tially evaluative in that only the avant garde is considered worthy of

(sociological) consideration. Zeraffa argues that the history of the novel

represents a move from social description to social interpretation which

also constitutes a move from 'illusion' to the achievement of art.20

Historically this may be a plausible account of late nineteenth and early

twentieth century trends but it oversimplifies the complexity of the more

recent past and is wholly misleading as an interpretation of the eight-

Sociology and lzterature 2 I 7

eenth century or earlier. Zeraffa's reference to Fielding's realism2l completely misunderstands that author's conscious exploitation of con- trivance and self-created convention while he seems unaware of the subjectivism of writers as important as Sterne or Cervantes. His argu- ment then is too restricted historically and this I believe derives from the critical perspective on the novel which sees it primarily in its literary context.

In criticizing Goldmann for confining his attention too much upon the concerns of individual writers Burns and Burns have stressed the importance of the literary context of the work for a critical sociological understanding.22 In their introduction to an important recent collection of studies they identify the aims of their critical perspective with Zeraffa's argument that the novel as art is essentially a challenge to the established social order.23 Arguing that 'sociology is an attempt to make sense of the ways in which we live our lives',24 Burns and Burns see it as a critical discipline. It is important to consider the implications of this

* -

posltlon.

'The purpose of sociology', they propose, 'is to achieve an under- standing of soeial behaviour and social institutions . . . which is not merely diffierent but new and better . . . It exists to criticize claims about the value of achievement and to question assumptions about the meaning of conduct. It is the business of sociologists to conduct a critical debate with the public about its equipment of social institutions'.25 The assumptions in this passage are questionable ones. Firstly it does not seem likely that a sociological understanding of social behaviour or social institutions should necessarily be different from 'that current among the people through whose conduct the instituiions exist'. At least some- times, or in some cases it appears at least probable that the people whose lives we may wish to make sense of already have a profound and in every way intellectually satisfactory understanding of themselves and their situation. Again, questioning people's assumptions about the meaning of conduct or criticism of their value claims may often occur incidentally in the course of sociological investigation but would not constitute the purpose for which sociology exists unless we define our ethical axiomata in a rather unusual way. Indeed the criiical posiiion reveals a glamorous and rather romantic self-image for the sociologist and perhaps a rather arrogant one. Where does the sociologist derive the standards in terms of which he or she is to carry out the critical function? Is not the sociologist equally a social being with the public under scrutiny? Has he (or she) some privileged access to a more pro- found moral knowledge denied to other lesser mortals?

Sociology is in the confused and self-destructive condition it is in today because too many sociologlsts see themselves as Moses. Burns and Burns have their Tablets of the Law in the renewed 'contact with the main- stream of European social philosophy and Kulturwissensschaft ' (note the implications of the use of the term 'mainstream' here). This they say

Trevor Xoble 8

has created 'the possibility of establishing the sociology of literature in the English speaking world on something like a sound basis ...'26 The criteria by which they calculate this comparison are interesting. They are not however to be found within their sociological analysis but re- present the prior value commitments of the critical approach which are only accessible to sociological investigation through a shift in conceptual framework which involves discarding the implicit ideology upon which the critical approach is founded.

Zeraffa's account of the transformation of the modern novel is in- structive here. He argues that:

Only when society came to lose its 'Balzacian' quality of organized totality only when the novelist came to forego his claim to perceive society as a picture, or as an organism with countless distinct and exemplary ramifications to select from-did we cease to expect re- alism from the work of an original writer, and accord his achievement the quality of spontaneity.27

There is a slight ambiguity about ZerafEa's intention. The point is, however, that society has not lost its quality of organised totality due to the change in the claim of the novelist but vice versa, and then not everywhere equally. It is necessary to consider the social location of writers (and their readers) more systematically and objectively that is to say sociologically-if we are to arrive at an understanding of the relationship between literature as an activity and society. Zeraffa may comprehend the situation of the French avant garde but his theme does not cater anything like so effectively for the achievements of writers in other countries28 nor yet the response they have evoked from publics both at home and abroad. Furthermore, it is no difficult matter to sub- sume even Zeraffa's historical scheme within a more comprehensive and flexible theoretical perspective. Thus, with France particularly in mind, Durkheim offered an account of the increasing individualism of modern consciousness as arising out of the changing structure of social relations.29 This presented an analysis which comprehends both the emergence of the concern for the understanding of the social order with the social transformations after the Revolution of I789 and the process of indus- trialization and also the growing concern with the experience of the individual in the literature of the later nineteenth century. Still within the framework of his argument we can infer that with the progressive differentiation of social structures, the isolation or marginality of the intellectual in the twentieth century and his consequent experience of anomie is likely to generate the collapse of that opposition of individual and society, which we can observe in the work of Svevo, Proust orJoyce, for example, towards the quest for identity and ultimately for meaning (any meaning) which is evident in Robbe-Grillet, Mailer, Heller (Something Hajhytened), even John Fowles, or, in the extreme case, of Beckett.30

Sociology and literature

XI9 An account of the development of the novel like the one tentatively sketched here might represent the schematic conclusion of a sociological analysis but, even fully elaborated, should not be mistaken for the thing itself. We have at this stage only the outline of a programme of research and it would be necessary to refine the issues, to sharpen the historical claims, to elucidate the causal connections so that their truth might be critically tested. This would not be possible if the programme were to confine itself to the avant garde, to the peaks of some Hegelian conscious- ness manifesting itself in the chosen favourites of an in-group who may know one another very well but about whom we know very little except their own accounts of themselves.

In his discussion of the contemporary novel in France, Goldmann expresses some doubts about the social-structural location of cultural creation.

Fictional literature, as perhaps modern poetic creation and contem- porary painting, are authentic forms of cultural creation even though they cannot be attached to the consciousness even a potential one

of a particular social group.3l

But this is to fail to recognise the change in the structure of urban industrial (bourgeois) society as a result of clinging to the categories of an analysis he has already rejected.32 The greater proportion of specialised high-cultural production in the modern world is the output of a declasse educationally recruited group of intellectuals33 self- and institutionally segregated from the major dimensions of class relation- ships but seeking, ideologically, to establish a (necessarily cultural) hegemony by presenting their own quest for intelligibility as a universal account of the world.34

For sociology the evaluations in the creation of and response to literature form part of the subject matter along with other aspects of literary production and appreciation. To make a commitment on such value preferences an integral component of our research methodology is an ideological claim which will necessarily destroy the possibility of any explanatory generalizations about our subject matter. If the sociology of literature is to achieve convincing explanatory status, it must address itself directly to the diversity of interest and experience which the model comprehends, the sociologist must consider a more comprehensive range of novels, writers and readers than those highly valued in his own social milieu. The avant garde is only to be understood sociologically in the context of the juste milieu, of the popular romance, the thriller and then perhaps in the tweniieth century only in relation to the mass media too. We can make no objective assumptions about this context. Empirically it is not the case that most writers these days write within a great tradition. On the contrary the reading of contem- porary novelists represents a literary context as heterogeneous as their social origins and commitments are diverse.35 But it is the social milieu

Trevor J%oble 220

of the writer which is neglected in the literary emphasis of the critical approach.

Most of the sociological theories of literature currently available involve an aesthetic and (perhaps therefore) social stance which is at least elitist.36 They address themselves to and generalize from work which is read by a highly articulate but socially most unrepresentative minority. This group is one which is deSned by its ideas and its litera- ture therefore is not merely an expression but part of the definition of the group's identity. That is to say if sociology is to be concerned ex- clusively with the literature of the intellectual elite, it runs the risk not only of being able to say nothing about the vast remainder of literary activity but of being unable to say anything sociological even about its own narrowly confined subject matter. Again the problem of defining the great or progressive novel presupposes the results of research and depends in essence upon extrapolating prior personal preferences in the guise of universalistic values.

III

The psychological processes of literary creation and the evolution of literary ideas within a particular tradition of thought, though of con- textual relevance to sociological investigation, would seem to lie outside its range. The resources of sociological thought are not infinite and are most fruitfully devoted to the understanding of the relationships and meanings involved in the social process. If sociology has anything to say about literature it is as a communicative, and therefore social, process.

It is clear however that we are concerned with a process which presents the sociologist with a number of problems. An involvement with fictional literature is neither an exclusive activity nor yet a uni- versal one. Any adequate model has to accommodate the generally neglected problem of being able to account for some having a taste for literature and for others' indiffierence to it. Escarpit's notion of litera- ture as escape draws our attention to this. Some people respond to their social situation by reading a book or writing one, while others cope with their problems in quite different ways or fail to cope at all. We should require of a theory that it could specify the circumstances of such a choice of strategy.

We should furthermore seek to devise a model for all literary be- haviour, for the tastes of the less adventurous many as well as the avant- garde few, for the novels people actually read or write as well as for the great works of the age or those which enjoy the enthusiasm of the fashionable reviewers. The familiar observation that different people read or like diffierent books and are likely to feel differently or even perceive diXerent things in the same book37 is not only something we should be prepared to explain; it also offers a clue to how an explanation might be achieved. We must locate our theoretical account at the nexus

Sociology and literature

of individual experience and action and the structural circumstances which shape that experience. Goffman's account of the elaboration of role performances38 offiers one way into this question. The exploration of social formations at the level of role rehearsal and role performance should permit us to distinguish the structural contexts operative in a preference, say, for Doris Lessing rather than Brigid Brophy and for either as against Alastair McLean, if any systematic diXerentiation exists.

A satisfactory model for the sociology of literature must accommodate theories which attempt not merely to discover but to explain the relation between the fictional and the mundane experience of its authors and readers.39 Relating the actions and preferences of individuals to their social structural context is difficult enough but has to be reconciled in this case with the essential open-endedness of what is above all creative behaviour whether we think of writing or of reading. If we should be sceptical about mechanistic theories of writing fiction it is equally im- portant to be so when we consider the readers' interpretations. Des- cribing the results of a survey of a wide spectrum of novel readers, Diana Spearman notes that her 'Respondents' idiosyncratic reaction to books shows the influence of fiction is not a question of a simple accept- ance or rejection of the author's views as the reaction to a political speech or a scientific treatise may be. People find what they are looking for, in the sense that what strikes them is what touches on their own preoccupations.'40 Thus readers' interpretations are creative in that they cannot be readily predicted from an analysis of the book read but, if at all, only in relation to the preoccupations they bring to the book from their prior experience.

The reading public is diverse and still needs more systematic investi- gation but such evidence as exists suggests that authors may be dis- tinguished from those who merely read their books mainly at a psy- chological level rather than in sociological terms.4l Though authors may perceive their publics in quite various ways we can find agreement between Escarpit and Goldmann that it is to the extent that they address themselves principally to other members of their own social milieu that the sociologist can gain an understanding of the process of literary creativity.42

We must in all this attempt to go beyond plausible hypothesis; we must find a way of testing our theories. Marxist and phenomenological and certainly functionalist theories43 seem to be able to provide some account of any relationship they are required to accommodate. A more cautious exploration may make more secure gains in explanation. When a theory survives a test which could show it to be wrong an exercise in imagination begins to look like a possible gain in knowledge.

From these desiderata a model almost begins to shape itself evading the Scylla of the evaluative fallacy and the Charybdis of rigid empiricism charted by Forster and Kenneford in their sceptical paper.44 If the

frevor ;Noble 2

faite litte'raire involves a problematic but createve semi-escapist response within the role-sets of some but not all individuals then novel reading (or writing) begins to look rather like a form of vicarious exploratory behaviour. That is to say) within the universe of the novel we are rehearsing patterns of behaviour and belief we are unsure about per- forming or dealing with in the real world.45 In a sociological context this immediately suggests that preferences for literature are likely to be related to the problematic areas of experience differentiated according to social milieu. Movement through the life-cycle as well as secular historical change will generate changing experiences and a changing series of problematic areas of behaviour. Variations in social norms and in normative specificity from one subculture to another as well as the structurally generated crises of a stratified society will engender differ- entiated problems, new ambiguities in the relationships we have with others and with ourselves, according to our particular location within the social structure.

The creative element means that in principle one cannot predict the precise outcome of the causal sequenceswhich can be hypothesized here so that substantive hypotheses about the consequences of observable configurations of independent variables cannot be formed. The unpre- dictability of response however is probably relative and can itself be made use of. The structural ambiguities of a reader's social milieu are likely to be related to the complexity of his response. The more complex the situation the less predictable the response and vice versa. Similarly the complexity of the literary work will be related to the predictability of the responses it generates in its public. These factors are probably interactive and themselves provide scope for experimental investigation. Thus failure to discover probable differences in the preferences of those with dissimilar social experience would cast serious doubt upon this kind of theorizing.

The argument outlined in this paper, I think, serves to counteract the pessimism of Forster and Kenneford who seem rather doubtful of how far a sociological understanding of literature is likely to contribute to the development of sociological theory. Carried through to empirical testing it cannot fail either to improve our understanding of one area of human activity or to demonstrate in practice the limitations of this kind of sociology.

Trevor JEfoble B.A.

Lecturer in Sociology, University of Sheffield

sciology and literature 3

Notes

I. But see e.g. BedVrich Baumann, 'George H. Mead and Luigi Pirandello: Some Parallels between the Theoretical and Artistic Presentation of the Social Role Concept' in Peter Berger (ed.), Marxism and Sociology Appleton-Century- Crofts, I969 pp. 202-46.

2. See Florian Znaniecki, The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge, Columbia University Press, I940, ch. I.

3. Robert Escarpit, Sociology of Litera- ture, 2nd edn, Frank Cass, I97I, p. 9I.

4. Ibid., p. I. Despite their similar etymology the English 'fact' here presents a range of more static connotations than the French 'fait'. Escarpit's notion of fait lttteraire is a more active thing than the English translation suggests, some- thing no doubt familiar to sociologists from reading Durkheim sympathetically.

5. Ibid., p. 86, and see also Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, Penguin, I 970, p. 249;

Gilbert Phelps, 'Persons Living or Dead', Folio, April/June I970, pp. 26-3I; and Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, Heinemann, I970, p. 25.

6. History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Merlin Press, I 97 I,

p. XXV.

7. Ibid., pp. Iggf. 8. E.g. Culture and Society, Chatto and

Windus, I958; The English Aovel from Dickens to Lawrence, Chatto and Windus, I970.

9. See, e.g., Lucien Goldmann, To- wards a Sociolog): of the Novel, Tavistock, I 975, pp- 7-9, I 8) I 35@

I0. Lucien Goldmann, The Hidden God, Routledge and Kegan Paul, I964.

It. We are told for instance that 'Malraux's ideological development is largely the expression of. . . change in the world in which he lived and wrote' op. cit., I975, p. I23, but at the same time that in the modern (capitalist) world literary work is no longer a re- flection but exists in a dialectical re- lationship with the collective conscious- ness of the bourgeoisie-as if that clarifies the matter see ibid., pp. I67 and I60.

I2. Cf. Raymond Williams 'Develop- ments in the Sociology of Culture', paper

Q

read to I975 Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, pp. 9-I0.

I3. Alan Swingewood, 'The Problem of Reflection in Literature and Sociology', paper read to the British Sociological Association, Sociology of Art Conference, November I 972, pp. I 2-I 3.

I4. A closely similar though perhaps somewhat more clearly developed dis- tinction has been made by Suzanne

_s . . . n . .

. Jangern Beelzng and Porm, . :toutlec ge anc Kegan Paul, I 953, between cognitive and affective processes in the representa- tion of experience.

I5. See, e.g., his The Hgstorical Novel, Merlin Books, I962.

I 6. See Lucien Goldmann, 'The Sociology of Literature: Status and Problems of Method', Internat. Soc. Sci. i., vol. I9 (I967), pp- 495-6 and 5I4; Op-

cit., I964, p. 3I4; and op. cit., I975, pp. 9, I 60.

I 7. Ibid. I8. Op. Cit., I 964, p. 3 I 5; Op. cit.,

I 975, p. I 58-

I 9. Op. cit., I 975, pp. 9, I 59-60.

20. Michel Zeraia, The Novel and Social Reality, Penguin Books, I976.

Reference is made here to the extract translated by Petra Morrison and Tom Burns in Elizabeth and Tom Burns, Sociology of Literature and Drams, Penguin, I973, pp. 45 6

2I. Ibid., p. 45. 22. Elizabeth and Tom Burns, op.

cit., I973, pp. 20-I.

23. Cf. ibid., p. 5+. As a recently published and therefore perhaps familiar development of this point of view within the sociology of literature, and one which I think is particularly clearly presented, I think it worthwhile to focus on Burns and Burns here rather than embark upon a general discussion of Critical Sociology.

24. Ibid., p. 9. 25. Ibid., p. I0. Cf. also Goldmann,

op. cit. I975, p. I5, 'In a society bound up with the market, the artist is. . . a problematic individual, and this means a critical individual, opposed to society.'

26. Op. cit., p. I6, emphasis added. 27. Op. cit., p 47-

Trevor J\loble 224

28. E.g. post revolutionary Russian novelists, in particular Bulgakov, Sholo- kov (or at least the writer of Quiet Flows the Don), Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn or German writers such as Mann or Boll.

29. See Emile Durkheim, fhe Division of Labour in Society, Free Press I 960.

30. This of course is to overgeneralize. There are many important, and many more less important exceptions to this tendency, e.g. Camus, Mann, Richard Adams.

3I. Op. cit., I975, p. IO, and see also ibid., pp. I3 and I6I, but contrast pp. I 64, I 6 7 -

32. Ibid.,p.Io. 33. A group defined by life-style and

therefore a status group rather than a class.

34. See the discussion in Lewis Feuer, Ideology and the Ideologists, Basil Blackvell, I975, and also Raymond Williams, op. cit., I975, p. I I.

35. See Frederic Raphael, BookmarArs, Cape, I 975.

36. Even if it would be premature (or meaningless) to classify it as bourgeois.

37. 'If we accept that the imaginative writer's chief concern is to explore feeling, then it should not be surprising that the reader responds in the main a5rectively rather than cognitively', Pat D'Arcy, Reading for Meaning: Vol. 2, The Reader's Response, Hutchinson, I 973, p. 78.

38. E.g. Erving GoSman, rEhe Presenta- tion of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin, I 969.

39. This is not to suggest that the role of the publisher should be neglected though it is to imply that commercial and technical considerations or indeed the cultural commitments of publishers are a second order problem in relation to the basic issues of what is written and

read, by whom and why. See T. G. Rosenthal 'Quality and Quantity: I:)o Publishers Form or Follow Public Demand ?' Booksellers Association Confer- ence, May I975; Escarpit, op. cit. I97I,

chs 5 and 6; L. L. Schucking rhe Sociology of Literary Taste, Routledge and Kegan Paul, I966, ch. VI.

40. Diana Spearman, 'The Social Influence of Fiction', ;New Society (6 July I 972) , p. 8*

4 I . See Malcolm Bradbury, The Social Context of Modern English Literature, Oxford, I97I; Malcolm Bradbury and Bryan Wilson 'New Introduction', p. I4

in Escarpit, op. cit., I97I; Diana F. Laurenson, 'A Sociological Study of Authorship', Brit. J. Sociol., vol. 20

(I969), pp.3II-95; P. H. Mann, 'Some Aspects of the Sociology of Book Read- ing', Education Libraries Bulletin, no. 4I

(I97I), pp. I - I0; and A New Survey: t Facts about Romantic Fiction, Mills and Boon, I 974; Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, Penguin, I965, p.266.

4X. See Escarpit, op. cit., p. 75;

Goldmann, op. cit., I 964, p. 3 I 5, and op. cit., I 975, pp. I X, I 58 ; see also Pierre Bourdieu, 'Intellectual Field and Cre- ative Project', Social Sci. Information, vol. 8 ( I 969), p. 95; and Williams, op. cit., I975, p. I0.

43. See my comments on Functionalist Theories of Literature in Trevor Noble, 'Notes on (Towards) a Sociology of Literature', i. Theory Social Behaviour, vol. 2 ( I 972), pp.205 - I 5.

44. Peter Forster and Celia Kenneford 'Sociological Theory and the Sociology of Literature', Brit. jr. Sociol., vol. 24

(I973)) pp.355 649 45. See Louise M. Rosenblatt, op. cit.,

. . .

p. Vlll.