SOCIOLOGICAL POETICS AND AESTHETIC THEORY By the same author THE SOCIOLOGY OF LITERATURE MARX AND MODERN SOCIAL THEORY THE NOVEL AND REVOLUTION THE MYTH OF MASS CULTURE A SHORT HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT Sociological Poetics and Aesthetic Theory Alan Swingewood Lecturer in So logy London School of Economics Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-0-333-43490-1 ISBN 978-1-349-18771-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18771-3 © Alan Swingewood 1987 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-40458-4 AIl rights reserved. For infonnation, write: Scholarly & Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1987 ISBN 978-0-312-00039-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-312-00040-0 (pbk) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Swingewood, Alan. Sociological poetics and aesthetic theory. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Literature and society. 2. Literature­ Philosophy. 3. Literature-Aesthetics. I. Title. PN98.S6S95 1987 801 86-15633 ISBN 978-0-312-00039-4 ISBN 978-0-312-00040-0 (pbk.) Contents Preface vii P ART I THEORIES OF AESTHETIC FORM 1. Poetic Theory and Sociological Method 3 Poetics, Interpretation and Criticism 3 Sociology, Marxism and Poetic Theory 7 Russian Formalism: Main Characteristics 11 Mimesis, Defamiliarisation and Science 13 Limitations of Formalist Poetics: Marxist Criticisms 16 Sociological Poetics: Bakhtin 19 Modernism and the Dialogic Imagination 21 Genetic Structuralism and Poetic Theory: Goldmann 25 2. Sociological Aesthetics 35 Aesthetics and Aesthetic Value 35 Marxism I: From Marx to Trotsky 37 Simmel: Sociology of Aesthetic Form 50 Marxism II: Lukacs and the Theory of Realism 54 The Frankfurt School: Critical Theory and Aesthetic Value 60 Structuralist Aesthetics: from Mukarovsky to Goldmann 67 PART II ELEMENTS OF SOCIOLOGICAL POETICS Introduction: Art and the Social 77 3. Ideology and Cultural Production 79 The Concept of Production 79 v vi Contents Production Aesthetics: Aesthetic Autonomy and the Concept of Aura 80 Epic Theatre: Art as Ideology 84 Production Aesthetics: Critical Observations 87 Ideology and Art 88 Decentred Text and Ideology 93 4. Historical Poetics 99 What is Historical Poetics? 99 Genre and Society 102 Genre and Popular Culture 106 Tradition and Culture 109 Hegemony 113 Author 115 5. Sociological Stylistics 119 Style and Sociology 119 Realism, Modernism and Narrative 124 Stylistic Analysis: Lukacs and Adorno on Kafka and Modernism 127 Modernism, the Avant-Garde and Everyday Life 131 6. Discourse, Reading, Reception 135 Theory of Discourse 135 The Reader and the Production of Meaning 137 Reception Aesthetics 142 Conclusion 148 Conclusion: Aesthetics and Politics 150 Bibliography 153 Index 161 Preface In this book I have examined and criticised some of the major contemporary literary, aesthetic and cultural theories as they bear on the possibilities of a sociology of literature and art. Part I is largely historical, tracing the development of a sociological poetics and sociological aesthetics from their origins in nineteenth-century positivism, historicism and Marxism to their complex elaboration in modem Marxism, Formalism, Structuralism and literary theory. Part II explores the elements which constitute the basis of a socio­ logy of literature and art, historical, cultural and socio-political. I have not written a critique of modem literary and aesthetic theory or provided a detailed analysis of specific poetic and aesthetic texts and forms. The few examples cited are entirely arbi­ trary although relevant to the argument. I should emphasise the sociological nature of this enterprise and thus 'the silences of the text'. ALAN SWINGEWOOD vii .