Социология литературы: от «модуса подозрения» к «культурсоциологии»

Логос. 2023. Т. 33. № 3. С. 237–267.

Kotelnikov M.

Within the framework of this article, we aim to codify the sociological approaches that have taken place earlier and are still relevant to the analysis of fiction. Particular attention is paid to the so-called cultural-sociological line of thought, the main specificity of which is the shift of the research focus from the analysis of the text and the personality of the author and the social conditions of its production to the reading practices carried out by ordinary readers, to their cognitive strategies and emotional modes. The article briefly analyzes the currently most significant works for cultural sociology.

Using the text of María Angélica Tumala Olave as an example, it is shown that despite a fruitful analysis of how the reading experience can affect people’s life trajectories, the researcher faces a significant epistemic difficulty, which consists in the fact that the emotions and/or knowledge gained in the process of reading are extremely are reluctant to reflect, and therefore it is rather difficult to talk about reading as a causal factor leading to certain life choices as a consequence.

The work of Jan Váňa seeks to combine an autoethnographic analysis of the reading of Jáchym Topol’s novel Sister with a study of the social context of its emergence and the specific language tropes used by the writer to achieve the effect of “immersion” in the world of the novel. Váňa undertakes an interesting attempt at a multifaceted study of a particular literary sample, yet suffering from superficiality in every one of the aspects of analysis involved. In addition, the article discusses (im)possible points of connection between sociology as a scientific discipline and literary creativity. Drawing on the work of David Beer, three possible types of contact between sociology and literature are discussed: the fictionalization of the theoretical imagination, the use of fiction as a documentary source for scientific purposes, and the theoretical analysis of literary works.

Keywords: культурсоциология, художественная литература, cultural sociology, социология литературы и искусства, imaginary, воображаемое, fiction, sociology of literature, New criticism, новая критика, surface reading, поверхностное чтение

Publication based on the results of: Russian Literature in the Social Dimension: SOCIOLIT – An Analytic Computation Platform (2023)