Sociology Of Literature

Literature, in its broadest sense, is any written work; etymologically the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura "writing formed with letters", although some definitions include spoken or sung texts. Literature is the process of literary creation and the cumulative product of creation. For the present writers, sociology has itself always represented a critical discipline. The purpose of sociology is to achieve an understanding of social behavior and social institutions which is different from that current among the people through whose conduct the institutions exist, an understanding which is not merely different but new and better. Literature provides an objective demonstration of the articulation of traditional values and of emergent values which, in turn, reflect the power structure of society and the challenges to it. It is commonplace in sociology to distinguish two kinds of methodological strategy.

            It is commonplace in sociology to distinguish two kinds of methodological strategy, One is concerned with understanding social action, in special sense attached to it by Webber, and thus envisages, interdependent, meanings-constructions of social reality to use the current terminology.  One is concerned with understanding social action, in the special sense attacked to it and thus imagine human life and society if as a complex network of interrelated, interdependent, meanings, construction of social reality to use the current terminology which are shared between members of a group, a community, a society but which are also partly and importantly created or assambled autonomously by individuals and imposed on the social world by them. Sociology and cultural history are something of a struggle to attain a common sense statement.

            Instead, current thinking in sociology, suggest the necessary co existance of both.  So, all too often, the dilemma is treated as resolved by invoking the simpliste notion of a dialectical relationship between them.

            Literature and drama provide the archetypal model of this dualism. Literature is the process of literary creation and cumulative product of creation and yet again, the process of literary creation in face of the cumulative product of previous product. The central purpose of sociology of the drama is to explore the significance and the meaning of the mere analogy. In drama, this experience, the immediate coming to recognize an unexpected feature of natural or social reality is doubled. Drama is a special kind of nativity which consists in composing a plausible semblance of human action of an important or consequential kind.

            The literary act, then, is something which transcend the reification of literature, but in which awareness of literature is embodied. But, this awareness is something necessarily shared, and in so far as it enters in, is institutionalized conventional in the act of literary creation itself. The sociology of literature can be visualized as the sector of overlap common to a variety of approaches to the study of literature.

            There is finally a section on readers and audiences in which one might expect the sociologist, in the orthodox sense, to come into his own.  It so happen that this is the one section which includes nothing by written by a sociologist. This is perhaps because we have not researched diligently enough, and it may be that the publication of this collection and this admission will help to bring to our attention reports of work in thus field which we have unluckily.