Theorizing the Social Through Literary Fiction : For a New Sociology of Literature

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F20%3A00115767" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/20:00115767 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1749975520922469" target="_blank" >https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1749975520922469</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1749975520922469" target="_blank" >10.1177/1749975520922469</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Theorizing the Social Through Literary Fiction : For a New Sociology of Literature

Original language description

When analyzing literary fiction, most cultural sociologists still accept the well-established boundaries between the literary and the sociological, thus leaving literature stripped of its aesthetic qualities. Instead, I propose a new approach that focuses on the process of meaning-making as it occurs within the interaction between the reader and the novel in a given socio-historical setting. This allows analysts to capture those aspects of understanding social experience which are usually ‘lost in translation’ between fictional and sociological genres. My major claims are that, first, when referring to social experience, both sociological and literary texts employ aesthetic devices to mediate understanding for the reader. Second, within the literary genre, the understanding of social experience relies much more on the emotional engagement of the reader through a reading process facilitated by these aesthetic devices. Third, to benefit methodologically and epistemologically from the lyrical understanding of social experience mediated by literature, cultural sociologists must be particularly sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings mediated by the aesthetic. The methodological advantage gained is the analysis of deeper cultural meanings grounded in, yet also going beyond, an emotionally and existentially experienced social reality, which is intersubjectively shared and filtered by various groups of readers and cultural intermediaries. The epistemological advantage gained by overcoming the assumed inferiority of literature is that cultural sociological research unlocks a whole new area for understanding the meanings of social life, especially its non-discursive dimensions. The research model I propose for a new sociology of literature adopts the landscape of meaning concept developed by Isaac Reed in combination with the aesthetic structuralism of Czech linguist Jan Mukařovský. This model will be demonstrated through an interpretive analysis of the Czech novel Sestra (published in English as City Sister Silver) by Jáchym Topol.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

—

Continuities

S - Specificky vyzkum na vysokych skolach

Publication year

2020

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Cultural Sociology

ISSN

1749-9755

e-ISSN

1749-9763

Volume of the periodical

14

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

21

Pages from-to

180-200

UT code for WoS article

000539050600004

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85086125377