Sociology and Literature

Author(s): Trevor Noble

Source: The British Journal of Sociology , Jun., 1976, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1976), pp.
211-224
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science

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

Trevor Noble

Sociology and literature

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

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2I2 Trevor J\lobte

usefully defined in practice. At any rate such an app

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

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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

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2I4 Trevor Joble

to the work of scholars like Raymond Williams writ

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

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Sociology and literature 2I5

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

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 Erevor J%oble
2I6

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-

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Sociology and lzterature 2I7

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

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 8 Trevor Xoble

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

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Sociology and literature

9IX
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

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 220 Trevor J%oble

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

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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

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 2 frevor ;Noble

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

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sciology and literature 3

Notes

I. But see e.g. BedVrich Baumann, read to I975 Annual Conference of the
'George H. Mead and Luigi Pirandello: British Sociological Association, pp. 9-I0.
Some Parallels between the Theoretical I3. Alan Swingewood, 'The Problem
and Artistic Presentation of the Social of Reflection in Literature and Sociology',
Role Concept' in Peter Berger (ed.), paper read to the British Sociological
Marxism and Sociology Appleton-Century- Association, Sociology of Art Conference,
Crofts, I969 pp. 202-46. November I 972, pp. I 2-I 3.
2. See Florian Znaniecki, The Social I4. A closely similar though perhaps
Role of the Man of Knowledge, Columbia somewhat more clearly developed dis-
University Press, I940, ch. I. tinction has been made by Suzanne
_s . . . n . .

3. Robert Escarpit, Sociology of Litera- . Jangern Beelzng and Porm, . :toutlec ge anc
ture, 2nd edn, Frank Cass, I97I, p. 9I. Kegan Paul, I 953, between cognitive
4. Ibid., p. I. Despite their similar and affective processes in the representa-
etymology the English 'fact' here presents tion of experience.
a range of more static connotations than I5. See, e.g., his The Hgstorical Novel,
the French 'fait'. Escarpit's notion of Merlin Books, I962.
fait lttteraire is a more active thing than I 6. See Lucien Goldmann, 'The
the English translation suggests, some- Sociology of Literature: Status and
thing no doubt familiar to sociologists Problems of Method', Internat. Soc. Sci. i.,
from reading Durkheim sympathetically. vol. I9 (I967), pp- 495-6 and 5I4; Op-

5. Ibid., p. 86, and see also Jorge Luis cit., I964, p. 3I4; and op. cit., I975,
Borges, Labyrinths, Penguin, I 970, p. 249; pp. 9, I 60.

Gilbert Phelps, 'Persons Living or Dead', I 7. Ibid.

Folio, April/June I970, pp. 26-3I; and I8. Op. Cit., I 964, p. 3 I 5; Op. cit.,

Louise M. Rosenblatt, Literature as I 975, p. I 58-

Exploration, Heinemann, I970, p. 25. I 9. Op. cit., I 975, pp. 9, I 59-60.

6. History and Class Consciousness, trans. 20. Michel Zeraia, The Novel and
Rodney Livingstone, Merlin Press, I 97 I, Social Reality, Penguin Books, I976.
p. XXV. Reference is made here to the extract
7. Ibid., pp. Iggf. translated by Petra Morrison and Tom
8. E.g. Culture and Society, Chatto and Burns in Elizabeth and Tom Burns,
Windus, I958; The English Aovel from Sociology of Literature and Drams, Penguin,
Dickens to Lawrence, Chatto and Windus, I973, pp. 45 6

I970. 2I. Ibid., p. 45.

9. See, e.g., Lucien Goldmann, To- 22. Elizabeth and Tom Burns, op.
wards a Sociolog): of the Novel, Tavistock, cit., I973, pp. 20-I.
I 975, pp- 7-9, I 8) I 35@ 23. Cf. ibid., p. 5+. As a recently
I0. Lucien Goldmann, The Hidden published and therefore perhaps familiar
God, Routledge and Kegan Paul, I964. development of this point of view within
It. We are told for instance that the sociology of literature, and one which
'Malraux's ideological development is I think is particularly clearly presented,
largely the expression of. . . change in I think it worthwhile to focus on Burns
the world in which he lived and wrote' and Burns here rather than embark upon
op. cit., I975, p. I23, but at the same a general discussion of Critical Sociology.
time that in the modern (capitalist) 24. Ibid., p. 9.
world literary work is no longer a re- 25. Ibid., p. I0. Cf. also Goldmann,
flection but exists in a dialectical re- op. cit. I975, p. I5, 'In a society bound
lationship with the collective conscious- up with the market, the artist is. . . a
ness of the bourgeoisie-as if that clarifies problematic individual, and this means
the matter see ibid., pp. I67 and I60. a critical individual, opposed to society.'
I2. Cf. Raymond Williams 'Develop- 26. Op. cit., p. I6, emphasis added.
ments in the Sociology of Culture', paper 27. Op. cit., p 47-

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224 Trevor J\loble

28. E.g. post revolutionary Russian read, by whom and why. See T. G.
novelists, in particular Bulgakov, Sholo- Rosenthal 'Quality and Quantity: I:)o
kov (or at least the writer of Quiet Flows Publishers Form or Follow Public
the Don), Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn or Demand ?' Booksellers Association Confer-
German writers such as Mann or Boll. ence, May I975; Escarpit, op. cit. I97I,
29. See Emile Durkheim, fhe Division chs 5 and 6; L. L. Schucking rhe
of Labour in Society, Free Press I 960. Sociology of Literary Taste, Routledge and
30. This of course is to overgeneralize. Kegan Paul, I966, ch. VI.
There are many important, and many 40. Diana Spearman, 'The Social
more less important exceptions to this Influence of Fiction', ;New Society (6 July
tendency, e.g. Camus, Mann, Richard I 972) , p. 8*

Adams. 4 I . See Malcolm Bradbury, The Social

3I. Op. cit., I975, p. IO, and see also Context of Modern English Literature,
ibid., pp. I3 and I6I, but contrast Oxford, I97I; Malcolm Bradbury and
pp. I 64, I 6 7 - Bryan Wilson 'New Introduction', p. I4
32. Ibid.,p.Io. in Escarpit, op. cit., I97I; Diana F.
33. A group defined by life-style and Laurenson, 'A Sociological Study of
therefore a status group rather than a Authorship', Brit. J. Sociol., vol. 20
class. (I969), pp.3II-95; P. H. Mann, 'Some
34. See the discussion in Lewis Feuer, Aspects of the Sociology of Book Read-
Ideology and the Ideologists, Basil Blackvell, ing', Education Libraries Bulletin, no. 4I
I975, and also Raymond Williams, op. (I97I), pp. I - I0; and A New Survey: t
cit., I975, p. I I. Facts about Romantic Fiction, Mills and
35. See Frederic Raphael, BookmarArs, Boon, I 974; Raymond Williams, The
Cape, I 975. Long Revolution, Penguin, I965, p.266.
36. Even if it would be premature (or 4X. See Escarpit, op. cit., p. 75;
meaningless) to classify it as bourgeois. Goldmann, op. cit., I 964, p. 3 I 5, and
37. 'If we accept that the imaginative op. cit., I 975, pp. I X, I 58 ; see also Pierre
writer's chief concern is to explore Bourdieu, 'Intellectual Field and Cre-
feeling, then it should not be surprising ative Project', Social Sci. Information, vol. 8
that the reader responds in the main ( I 969), p. 95; and Williams, op. cit.,
a5rectively rather than cognitively', Pat I975, p. I0.

D'Arcy, Reading for Meaning: Vol. 2, The 43. See my comments on Functionalist
Reader's Response, Hutchinson, I 973, p. 78. Theories of Literature in Trevor Noble,
38. E.g. Erving GoSman, rEhe Presenta- 'Notes on (Towards) a Sociology of
tion of Self in Everyday Life, Penguin, I 969. Literature', i. Theory Social Behaviour,
39. This is not to suggest that the role vol. 2 ( I 972), pp.205 - I 5.

of the publisher should be neglected 44. Peter Forster and Celia Kenneford
though it is to imply that commercial 'Sociological Theory and the Sociology
and technical considerations or indeed of Literature', Brit. jr. Sociol., vol. 24
the cultural commitments of publishers (I973)) pp.355 649
are a second order problem in relation 45. See Louise M. Rosenblatt, op. cit.,
to the basic issues of what is written and
. . .

p. Vlll.

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