Knowing through feeling : the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F21%3A00121396" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/21:00121396 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41290-021-00130-5" target="_blank" >https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41290-021-00130-5</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41290-021-00130-5" target="_blank" >10.1057/s41290-021-00130-5</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Knowing through feeling : the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading

Original language description

Following the strong program in cultural sociology, I propose a “literary turn” to recognize literary texts “as relatively autonomous cultural entities” with their own agency. This article is part of a larger project connecting cultural sociology with the sociology of literature and literary theory to develop a strong program in the sociology of literature. Instead of approaching literary fiction as an object of analysis, sociology and literature can contribute to social knowledge in a symmetrical way, where fiction is not devalued vis-a-vis social scientific inquiry. Just the opposite: recognizing the specificities of literary communication, we can access textures of social life that are only hardly graspable by sociology. A crucial step is to examine how social knowledge comes into existence when reading a fictional text. Embracing the structural aesthetics of Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukařovský, I modify the concept of iconicity to capture the iconic experience of reading through which literature mediates social experience that is iconic of broader social phenomena. I demonstrate my approach by analyzing the Czech novel Bliss was it in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh (Bliss was it in Bohemia, Jantar Publishing, London, 1992). Building on social aesthetics, I discuss implications of my model for sociological theory, textual representation, and sociological explanation in general.

Czech name

—

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

2021

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

American Journal of Cultural Sociology

ISSN

2049-7113

e-ISSN

2049-7121

Volume of the periodical

9

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

GB - UNITED KINGDOM

Number of pages

31

Pages from-to

211-241

UT code for WoS article

000638016900001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85104059518