FSS:CSOn4012 Sociology of literature - Informace o předmětu

CSOn4012 Sociology of literature

Předmět se v období podzim 2024 nevypisuje.

Rozsah

1/1/0. 10 kr. Ukončení: zk.
Vyučováno prezenčně.

Vyučující

Mgr. Jan Váňa, PhD (přednášející), doc. PhDr. Csaba Szaló, Ph.D. (zástupce)

Garance

doc. PhDr. Csaba Szaló, Ph.D.
Katedra sociologie – Fakulta sociálních studií
Kontaktní osoba: Ing. Soňa Enenkelová
Dodavatelské pracoviště: Katedra sociologie – Fakulta sociálních studií

Omezení zápisu do předmětu

Předmět je nabízen i studentům mimo mateřské obory.
Předmět si smí zapsat nejvýše 20 stud.
Momentální stav registrace a zápisu: zapsáno: 0/20, pouze zareg.: 0/20, pouze zareg. s předností (mateřské obory): 0/20

Mateřské obory/plány

předmět má 11 mateřských oborů, zobrazit

Cíle předmětu

Upon the successful completion of the course, students should have a broad knowledge of the complex relationship between sociology and literature as socio-historical institutions, genres, and epistemological styles. Students should know methods and tools for sociological research of literary communication from the text’s production to its relatively autonomous career to reception. Students should be also able to utilize literary fiction for interpreting and communicating sociological knowledge and understand basic principles of literary aesthetic devices such as metaphor, allegory, parable, etc.

Osnova

• 1. Introduction: Clifford Geertz and Joseph Conrad
• Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
• 2. Literature and Society
• Honoré de Balzac: Thrirteen, Patricia Lockwood: No One Is Talking About This
• 3. Marxism (1): “The truly social element in literature is: the form,” György Lukács
• Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
• 4. Marxism (2): Feeling Structures on the Move, Lucien Goldmann & Raymond Williams
• Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
• 5. Field Theory of Pierre Bourdieu
• Gustave Flaubert: L'éducation sentimentale: histoire d'un jeune homme
• 6. L'éducation sentimentale for 21st century “bored housewives”: Fifty Shades of Grey as an expression of Zeitgeist
• E.L. James: Fifty Shades of Grey
• 7. Epistemology (1): Between Fiction and Reality, Hayden White & Stephen Greenblatt
• Colson Whitehead: Underground Railroad
• 8. Epistemology (2): Literature as a Laboratory of the Social, Alfred Schütz & Georg Gadamer
• Matt Ruff: Lovecraft Country
• 9. Knowing through Reading: Aesthetic Experience and Social World
• Marieke Lucas Rijneveld: The Discomfort of Evening
• 10. Literature and Social Knowledge: Writing as Theorizing
• Milan Kundera: Immortality
• 11. Reading Sally Rooney's Normal People as Social Theory of Love
• Sally Rooney: Normal People
• 12. Sociological Fiction
• selected sociological fiction from SO FI ZINE (https://sofizine.com/)

Literatura

povinná literatura
• LEPENIES, Wolf. Between literature and science : the rise of sociology. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme. viii, 388. ISBN 0521338107. 1988. URL info
• BOURDIEU, Pierre. The rules of art : genesis and structure of the literary field. Translated by Susan Emanuel. First published. Cambridge: Polity. xviii, 410. ISBN 9780745611525. 1996. info
• REED, Isaac. Interpretation and social knowledge : on the use of theory in the human sciences. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 194 s. ISBN 9780226706740. 2011. info
• ILLOUZ, Eva. Hard-core romance : Fifty shades of grey, best-sellers, and society. Chicago: The University of Chicago press. 97 stran. ISBN 9780226153698. 2014. info
• Ruff, Matt. (2016). Lovecraft Country. HarperCollins.
• Watson, A. (2016). Directions for Public Sociology: Novel Writing as a Creative Approach. Cultural Sociology, 10(4), 431–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639081
• Watson, A. (2021). Writing sociological fiction. Qualitative Research, 146879412098567. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794120985677
• Griswold W (1987) The fabrication of meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and the West Indies. American Journal of Sociology 92(5): 1077–1117. https://doi.org/10.1086/228628.
• WHITEHEAD, Colson. The underground railroad. London: Fleet. 366 stran. ISBN 9780708898406. 2017. info
• KUNDERA, Milan. Immortality. Translated by Peter Kussi. London: Faber & Faber. 387 s. ISBN 0571209181. 2001. info
• CONRAD, Joseph. Heart of darkness. London: Penguin Books. 110 s. ISBN 0140620486. 1994. info
• RICŒUR, Paul. Time and narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin - David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 355 s. ISBN 0226713350. 1984. info
• GEERTZ, Clifford. The interpretation of cultures : selected essays. New York: Basic Books. ix, 470. ISBN 0465097197. 1973. info
• LAURENSON, Diana a Alan SWINGENWOOD. The sociology of literature. London: Paladin. 281 s. 1972. info
• AUSTEN, Jane. Pride and prejudice. Edited by Anthea Bell. 1st ed. London: Longmans. xii, 172. 1960. info
• FLAUBERT, Gustave. L'éducation sentimentale : histoire d'un jeune homme. Éd. définitive. Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier, 1912. info

doporučená literatura
• VÁŇA, Jan. Knowing through feeling : the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading. American Journal of Cultural Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, roč. 9, č. 2, s. 211-241. ISSN 2049-7113. doi:10.1057/s41290-021-00130-5. 2021. URL URL info
• VÁŇA, Jan. More than just a product : Strengthening literature in sociological analysis. Sociology compass. Hoboken: Wiley, roč. 14, č. 6, s. 1-16. ISSN 1751-9020. doi:10.1111/soc4.12789. 2020. URL info
• VÁŇA, Jan. Theorizing the Social Through Literary Fiction : For a New Sociology of Literature. Cultural Sociology. London: SAGE Publications, roč. 14, č. 2, s. 180-200. ISSN 1749-9755. doi:10.1177/1749975520922469. 2020. URL info

Výukové metody

reading sociological studies and selected fictional texts
class discussion
student presentations

Metody hodnocení

weekly position papers (20 %)
presentation - interpretation of a novel (20 %)
in-class activity (20 %)
final essay (40 %)

Vyučovací jazyk

Angličtina

Informace učitele

First of all, we must prevent a possible misunderstanding that comes into mind when looking at the title of this course. Even though “Sociology of Literature” has a long tradition that spans centuries and includes various schools of thought, I find the title rather inaccurate. Or at the very least, it does not represent the full scope of what we will be discussing here.
More precisely we should talk about “Sociology of/through/in/from Literature” or simply “Sociology and Literature.” What we are going to do is far from cutting literature into pieces that are easily categorized, labeled, and inspected through the lenses of the so-called “science” (as in “social science”). As we know that the discourse is power (as famously conceptualized by Michel Foucault), we can see how the preposition “of” renders literature as a subject of sociology. Sociology “of” literature implies that sociologists can approach literary works as something passive and static to be examined with regard to its “social” aspects and surroundings. As we will see, this line of thinking was predominantly shaped by Marxism and structuralism and prevails in the form of popular paradigms such as the research of cultural industries and the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu. Do not get me wrong – these schools have proven themselves highly effective when it comes to explaining power dynamics or material and ideological constraints of literary communication. The first few lectures will be dedicated to the founders and classics of the sociology of literature, most significantly to György Lukács, Lucien Goldmann, Raymond Williams, and Pierre Bourdieu. However, they cover only a part of what I believe is worth exploring within the literature-sociology link.

If we take, for example, the preposition “from,” the power ratio between sociology and literature significantly changes. Looking back, we can realize that works of literary fiction were substantially sociological long before the foundation of sociology as a scientific discipline. Since a long time ago, literature has dealt with what we today praise as sociology’s highest merits, such as sociological imagination, the ability to identify social typifications or to talk about abstract phenomena that are bound to broader collective identities of a given time and space. Probing “sociology in literature,” we will discuss how literary works can grasp the general social mood and atmosphere that is usually called Zeitgeist, how this Zeitgeist then travels in the form of books, and how these books are interpreted, glorified, or shunned by diverse groups of readers.

If we are to understand how sociological knowledge gets channeled through literary fiction, we must dig into the very core of terms like interpretation, representation, and explanation of social experience. We will compare the epistemologies of sociological and literary texts concerning the following questions: Who writes these texts and for what audience? What are the presuppositions of the producers, publishers, editors, and of readers, reviewers, and critics? What are the criteria of a “good” fiction and “good” sociological writing? Are there any similarities in the way sociology and literature approach, codify, and communicate social experience? is not sociology also a kind of aesthetic and literature kind of illuminative? We will try to read fictional and sociological texts for pure enjoyment and assess our experience of such reading. We will make a close reading of selected fictional passages to figure out how and why the text has a specific effect on the reader, that is, to nail down the text’s aesthetic structure.

Finally, the course will serve as a textual laboratory for experimentation between sociological and fictional writing. We will interpret texts that were designated as sociological fiction. Is there any room for fictional or lyrical writing in social sciences? What are the possible benefits of sociology making allies with novels, short stories, or poems? We will embrace these genres to write sociological fiction of our own and discuss their potential for public sociology, that is, whether literary fiction can make it easier to communicate and clarify sociological thinking beyond the ivory towers of academia.

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