Review

Author(s): E. Bond Johnson, III

Review by: E. Bond Johnson, III
Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 89-91
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40246072
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 BOOK REVIEWS 89

Literary Criticism and Sociology: Yearbook of Comparative Criticism,

Volume V.

Ed. JOSEPH P. STRELKA. University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1973. 297 pp.

In the course of the last five years, three major comparative serials have been de-
voted to topics concerning literature and its relationship to society. The Year-
book of Comparative and General Literature, Number 22, 1973, is comprised of
six papers given at the conference on Politics and Literature at Indiana University,
October 5-7, 1972. Volume X, Number 4 (December, 1973) of this journal con-
tains papers given at a symposium on Utopian Social Thought in Literature and
the Social Sciences, October 26-28, 1972, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. Whereas the two former publications grew out of conferences and
focus on specific topics, the current volume of the Yearbook of Comparative
Criticism is a collection of essays which regards the entire area of literary criti-
cism and sociology, with thirteen studies grouped in three categories: "Basic
Theoretical Problems," "Special Historical Problems," and "Metacritical Synthe-
sis." Each of the above volumes is an important contribution to the renewal of
a sense of social conscience in literary criticism, and though each has a distinct-
ive profile, all three indicate that, to a greater or lesser extent, the radical voices
of the Sixties have had their effect and are being echoed in the traditional aca-
demic establishment.
The two publications which grew out of conferences give the impression of
thought -provoking, if not exactly revolutionary, meetings. The essays in the Year-
book of Comparative and General Literature indulge in essential consciousness-
raising concerning the political role of the writer and the critic. Eugen Weber
gives an astute reassessment of Barrés as a representative of the bored leisure
classes, and George L. Mosse rehearses D'Annunzio's political role at Fiume and
its effect on Mussolini's political tactics. André Reszler's piece on "Bakunin,
Marx and the Aesthetic Heritage of Socialism" makes several cogent distinctions
between anarchist aesthetics and Marxist aesthetics; and George Steiner's note
on " 'Poetics,' 9" demonstrates the manner in which the writer has in part as-
sumed the function of the historian. Theodore Ziolkowski's "Nonpartisan
Thoughts on Politics and Literature" and Denis De Rougemont's "The Social
Responsibility of the Writer in Contemporary Western European Societies" are,
as one might expect, genial and civilized. Ziolkowski, after a recapitulation of
his argument on the reasons the sonnet has been a popular form of literary re-
sistance in facist as well as communist dictatorships, concludes that "it is per-
haps at this juncture - where political expression and literary quality come to-
gether - that the non-partisan critic can be most effective" (p. 18). De Rouge-
mont pleads for the writer at the end of the twentieth century to "give birth to
the model of an open community, which would place the center of society at
the center of man. Its goal would be ... a dynamic equilibrium between three
perpetual disequilibriums: Man, City, and Nature; the freedom of the persons
and groups, and not the ugly power of the Nation-States" (p. 69).
It is precisely the question of what effect the writer and critic might have on
his society that is explored in the papers given at the symposium on Utopian
Social Thought. Purely sociological papers as well as sociological analyses of
literature were presented, and the tone of the gathering resembles that of the
conference on Politics and Literature. The various authorial voices are well
tempered and humane. The perspective of Utopian social thought has allowed
fresh insights to sociologists and literary scholars as well. There is, fittingly, a
pleasantly optimistic tone in the proceedings of the symposium on Utopian

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90 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Social Thought. Perhaps it is by creating a greater awareness of the political as-

pects of literature and by examining the familiar corpus from a sociological
perspective that the literary critic can begin to effect subtle alterations in the
perceptions of the purveyors of literary art and their audience.
The Yearbook of Comparative Criticism is in the vein of the two volumes with
more limited topics but expands the focus to consider the relationship between
literature and society in general, with essays on a variety of themes which serve
to heighten the critic's social awareness. The four essays in the opening section
explore the nature of a literature's relationship with the society in which it is
shaped. "What has come to be known as the sociology of literature," Walter H.
Bruford writes, "may perhaps best be regarded ... as an extension of literary
history to include an account of as many as possible of the innumerable con-
nections which can be discovered between literature and social life" (p. 18).
Paul Ramsey comments, similarly, that "since literature is largely about society,
and since the men who write it are under various social influences, the study of
literature necessarily and extensively overlaps the study of society" (p. 21).
Jeffrey L. Sammons, whose essay focuses on the threat which conservative
critics have viewed in the new sociological approach, argues that "the way to
meet the threat of literary sociology is to cease regarding it as a threat. If the
literary scholar regards himself as among the chief est of the humanists, as he
generally does, then nothing human should be alien to him" (p. 39). While
Karl Tober comments that "we cannot hope to understand poetry by regarding
it simply as documentation of history or a product of society" (p. 51), he adds
that "it would be regrettable if political hysteria and methodological neuroses
were to paralyze sociological analysis" (p. 52).
The studies in the section on "Special Historical Problems" reveal a consider-
able spectrum in the practice of sociological approaches. Wilhelm Emil Muhl-
mann's "Socioliterary Sketches," a series of brief interrelated essays on tradition
and revolution in German literature of the last two centuries, provides an illumi-
nating perspective on the works of authors so diverse as Immermann and Kafka.
Vytautas Kavolis develops useful distinctions between what he terms "Modern-
istic" and what he terms "Underground" in two avant-garde plays, one from
Soviet Lithuania and one from Soviet Estonia. Zdenko Skreb presents a pro-
vocative examination of a topic touched on by Muhlmann, that of littérature
engagée. Alphons Silberman writes on literature and mass communication,
and Maxwell Goldberg on the pervasiveness of the reticulum image in several
contemporary modes and its character as an expression for what he calls "The
Technetronic Age." In another vein, Harry Levin has surveyed official reactions
to pornographic literature in the article on The Report of the Commission on
Obscenity and Pornography, which also appears in his Grounds for Comparison
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 32, 1972).
The concluding section of the book "Metacritical Synthesis," presents three
essays which summarize the course of sociological criticism in Russian literature,
German literature, and British and American literature. (A projected essay on
sociological studies in French literature did not arrive in time for inclusion in the
collection.) Peter Brang's survey, "Sociological Methods in Twentieth-Century
Russian Criticism," is the most ambitious of the three critical histories, and for
one not versed in the Russian critics of our century it is an absorbing and informa-
tive piece. Brang explores the various sociological methods of criticism prior to
1930; summarizes briefly the period from 1930 to 1965, during which literary
criticism was dominated by ideology; and concludes with a consideration of the
attempts to revive socio-literary approaches after 1966. Hans Norbert Fiigen con-
centrates primarily on post-1945 trends in sociological criticism in Germany, al-
though he points out in his introductory paragraphs that there were significant
nineteenth-century contributions on the subject which have been largely ignored

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 BOOK REVIEWS 91

by contemporary critics. Fiigen himself has deferred comment on the latest

directions of German scholarship. Hans Rudnick's study, the briefest of the
three, traces the most recent trends in British and American theories of a
sociology of literature. His concluding sentence aptly reflects many of the
opinions expressed in other sections of the work: "Literature is being taken
seriously as an independent utterance that contains reflections of the general
social situation of the creative individual and also of man" (p. 279).
The tone of Rudnick's statement is characteristic of the sane and modu-
lated tone of most of the contributions in the three volumes. Clearly there are
a good many scholars who are attempting to synthesize what often seems ir-
reconcilable in the theories of the more strident Marxist critics - a sociological
approach and the notion of literary art. As far as they go, they are relatively
successful. It is notable, however, that there is no representative of the more
daring trends in socio-literary research. The literatures discussed remain by
and large those traditionally compared. There is only occasional mention of any
of the literatures of the third world. The specific concerns of women in litera-
ture are represented only by Lyman Tower Sargent's "Women in Utopia."
There is no consideration of black literature or of gay literature, both of which
are now being presented in courses in major universities. Indeed, one must
question the validity of a synthesis which does not include so many of the im-
portant areas of current socio-literary study. It is gratifying to see some of the
finest established comparative scholars turning their attention to relevant social
attitudes in the more traditional fields. Hopefully there will be less hesitancy
in the future to venture into more controversial areas of socio-literary thought,
and to incorporate the ideas and the voices of critics who represent less tra-
ditional directions of comparative study. Only then will the synthesis be a
lasting one.

E. BOND JOHNSON, III • University of California, Los Angeles

The Reverent Discipline: Essays in Literary Criticism and Culture.

By GEORGE A. PANICHAS. The University of Tennessee Press, 1974. 462 pp.

Criticism has not lately shown much interest in the great first questions which have
been raised, and raised repeatedly, in the formative phase of every important literary
era: what is the nature and function of criticism, its relation to morals, history, religion,
and science, its responsibility to society, its place in the hierarchy of humanistic values?
The New Critics seem to have been the last to care very much about the anatomy and
bodily processes of their discipline as a whole, and since their decline the interests of
criticism have apparently shifted from problems of self -definition to those of generic
investigation and practical procedure - the nature of narrative, the meaning of Struc-
turalism, the forms of fantasy, the uses of rhetorical and ironic elements in the inter-
pretation of texts. Either we have come to take it for granted that the function of
criticism is too well known to be discussed, or we have concluded that it no longer
has a function worth discussing. Or it may be that what we have now has not ceased
to have a function but has ceased to be criticism, having become a minor tributary
of linguistics or a waste-product of computer programming.
Professor Panichas may in this sense be old-fashioned, for he still believes in the
importance of the great questions and he engages them in this first collection of his
essays with commendable forthrightness. It is his belief that "the exercise of criticism -

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