The World of Sociology(1)

Note: Sociology is part of my identity and literature as well. Then, I'll try to speak about these fields in some posts

Sociology of literature & literary sociology

As a branch of general sociology, sociology of literature is concerned with transtextuality, or anything that is outside the domain of the text itself. This field might include the process of production and distribution of the literary work, the audience, the author, critics, literary institutions, etc. On the other hand, literary sociology, as a branch of literary studies, is concerned with the text and its meaning, and aims to improve understanding of the text or its interpretations, and interprets the text linguistically from the perspectives of morphology, grammar, semantics and semiotics. Main figures of this field are Jacque Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Luis Althusser.
Two main approaches can be distinguished within sociology of literature, both of which are subject to criticism: the materialist approach and the idealist approach. Materialists see the connection between literature and society to be reflexive and mechanical, where literature is reduced to its representations of social and especially economic issues of society. This approach adopts a unilateral view toward literature and neglects the aesthetic autonomy of literature and literary phenomena. According to many critics, this view does not allow a proper interpretation of complicated literary phenomena. Idealists, on the other hand, believe in the perfect autonomy of artistic and literary products. Idealists ignore the complicated relation between social facts and literary works. They deal with literature in a purist and idealist manner, detaching it from social fact in order to reach its pure spirit. They reject any connection between literature and social and historical phenomena.
The three indivisible parts of sociology of literature are the book, the literary work, and reading, each of which are individually studied in the sociology of the book, the sociology of literary production, and the sociology of reading.
In sociology of book the sociologist studies the process of book production and distribution and asks why a book sells well in a certain time span and not in others, why does a special group read a particular book, why do some books not find their audience in spite of the literary value they enjoy, and why are the sales rates of books low in some societies. To find the answers to these questions the sociologist of literature studies the function of institutions such as universities, cultural centers, libraries, literary circles, organized censorship, and literary prizes, all of which are supposed to have much influence on the production, distribution, and even creation of the book.
Sociology of the literary creation, which goes back to the author and concentrates on thoughts and language, is closely connected to social reality while not being confined to it. Analysis of the form/content relationship is one of the issues in the study of literary creation. Erich Köhler sees the literary work as “the inseparable unification of form and content. The agreement between form and content can be considered a criterion for evaluating a work of art” (Timori Fasle No Journal).
Today, one of the influential and complex fields in sociology of literature is “reading the text”. Reading is a dialogue between the text and the transtext. In sociology of reading, what the reader does is as creative as the work of the author. Reading is an active process between the text and the mind of the reader; a close connection between the production and the perception of the literary works. Sociology of reading aims to answer such questions as: How is it that different readers have different interpretations of a single text? How is it that a single text has various interpretations in different eras? What is the relationship between textual structure and the mind of the reader? Do expectations of the reader influence his or her reading of a text? To what extent do a person’s education, mentalities, social status and class influence his or her reading and understanding of the text?
In fact, the literary work does not have a single structure so as to be interpreted in a single manner by all readers. Rather, the text has a multi-layer structure which results in multiple readings and consequently multiple interpretations of the text. The reading of a text is not limited to the reception of the message the text intends to communicate. The reading of a text is the ability of decoding through transtextuality. The reader does not have a passive mind; rather, the reader deals with the text according to his or her mental background, ideology, dreams and expectations. Therefore, any reader's reading of a text is unique to him or herself, and a text might have as many meanings as its readers. The author of a text might be only one of the elements or agents. The hypertext is as influential in the creation of a text as its author. Society, people, history, culture, current events, and the readers play parts similar to the author's in the formation of a work of art.
Jacques Derrida regards “reading as a kind of deconstruction. He believes in two types of reading. Classic reading which results in understanding the pretense of the text, and deconstructive reading which penetrates deep into the text” (Caputo, Derrida 76) . In the second type, reading is a kind of hermeneutic interpretation. In hermeneutics meaning is relative. There is no single and constant meaning. Any text possesses various meanings according to the various readings that there is of it, none of which is the definite meaning.
Jacques Derrida remarks in this regard that “a text has as many writers as its transtext and as many meanings” (G.Allen 103).


György Lukács Writer of Sociology of Novel

The other point is “the difference between sociology of literature and sociology of the novel. Although the novel is a literary genre, it is unique. According to Lukacs it can be seen as the epic of the modern era” (McKeon 179). If we consider the epic to be a replacement for myth (traditional rather than modern) then the novel can be seen as the modern replacement of the epic, and even as a complement that goes along with myth. Sociology of the novel is a recent form of sociology of literature which found its material (novels) from the Renaissance onward with the creation of Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Bibliography:

McKeon, Michael. Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Timori, Abbas. “An Introduction to Sociology Of Literature.” Fasl-e No. Version 5. Faculty of Social Science, University of Tehran, n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2010. .

Lukacs, Georg. The Theory of the Novel. Trans by Hasan Mortazavi, Tehran: Nashr-e- Ghesseh, 1381.

Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. Trans by Payam Yazdanjoo, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1385

Caputo, John. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy). New York: Fordham University Press, 1996.

When Writers Fall in Love with Cities

A Book Review for An Anthology


However I believe that" Writing New York City" is more than a literary anthology, but this is a name which is chosen by its writer: Phillip Lopate. He is is the author of many essays such as Against Joie de Vivre, Bachelorhood, Being with Children, Portrait of My Body, and Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, and the novels The Rug Merchant and Confessions of a Summer. He also has worked as an editor of The Art of the Personal Essay, the Library of America's Writing New York, and the series editor of The Art of the Essay. His film criticism appears regularly in The New York Times and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. This post is my review on this book.

Writing New York City

However, New York City was not always a big city, but now it is too big and complicated a city to be described well by just one writer. Writers who have lived in New York for some time have written some lines describing it, and Phillip Lopate, the editor of this book, has tried to collect them in Writing New York City.
Phillip Lopate , in book's preface, noted that “many popular American writers who are not necessarily from New York have a phase of this city in their collection. According to many, no one is able to describe this city within literary texts such as novels, diaries, and poems, for example as James Joyce has done regarding Dublin” (xvii). He mentioned that “New York's essence, literary or otherwise, grows out of the street experience” (xvii). Streets are a main concept in literary works which are about New York. Lopate gives an example in this way from Henry Miller. As he noted, “In the street you learn what human beings really are; otherwise, or afterwards, you invent them. What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature” (xviii)
It can be said that Walt Whitman had a great impact on describing the city, particularly on peripatetic poets such as Frank O’ Hara. In addition, as Lopate states, “ some of best novelists, such as E.L.Doctorow, Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, and Oscar Hijuelos, have invested considerable energy in stories about the New York of their youth” (xxii).
This anthology includes 132 texts that collected materials can be categorized thus:
1. The literary descriptions and explanations of New York City.
2. Poems
3. Diaries
4. Historical fictions and autobiographical writings.
Finally, Lopate has concluded that “the making of anthologies is a hard activity” (xxii); especially when you try to do it about New York. He says: “it has not been possible, for example, to include excerpts from all the great novels about New York” (xxii).




Lopate, Philip, ed. Writing New York City. New York: Publication of the Library of America, 2008.

The Myth of Paris...

Note: This post is part of my MA dissertation which was about city and myth."Paris, a Modern Myth" is a theory by Roger Caillois. Here, I tried to explain this theory and applied it for my approach about "The Myth of New York City".


Paris, a Modern Myth

Being concerned with the diminishing presence of myth in modern human life, Roger Caillois begins his essay, Paris, a Modern Myth, by claiming that what causes myths to be less considered is that they do not meet the needs which they previously fulfilled. However, it is not really clear how by what powers those needs are fulfilled in today’s mechanized world. Since myth is an imaginary concept, the first option may be literature and it is literature which can fulfill those mentioned needs. Perhaps, this is the meeting point of modern myth and literature.
After stating the relationship between literature and myth, Caillios speaks of a power which literature may have: “And the problem is brought forth in collective scale, without considering myth as a specific concept. Literature does achieve the same power as that of the media, but in the realm of imagination” (Caillois 66).
When literature achieves a considerable power in the realm of imagination it has an indirect and even more important influence than myth, while having effects that are similar to those of myth. It is a kind of sociology of literature which pays attention to both popular and elitist literature. Regarding the issue of sociology of literature, it can be said that a subjective image of the metropolis has been made in this view, a city which has such a strong effect on imagination that it does not consider the correctness of that effect.
This is the point at which we can understand the imaginative features of mythical representation. “The historians of literature have not overlooked the elevation of the city to an epical status or the sudden praise of the city. This event can be observed in the first half of the 19th century, when writers began depicting Paris with a laudatory tone” (67).
These are the end results of the presence of imagination aspects of life. The surrounding world is no longer remote and out of reach; it is a world in which everyone can live and imagination is a part of it. To Caillois, who wants to present the myth of Paris as a modern myth, the most obvious form of this phenomenon which has coincided with the emergence of great industries and the urban proletariat, is the transformation of adventure stories into detective novels. In other words, we can see a change in literary genres in relation to the increasing development of modern societies. This transformation is surely the result of the fact that the locations of the novels have been displaced from jungles and meadows to cities and as a result, the adventurous novels have been turned into detective novels. One of the pioneers in this respect is James Fenimore Cooper, to whom Balzac always points to his debate. Some novels such as Mohicans de Paris emerge in this era.
The mythical structure grows fast, so with the presence of metropolises in the novels and stories, the mythical hero comes into them to conquer the modern metropolis. This is a hero who differs substantially from previous heroes in these novels. City life is a new phenomenon. There are few works in French Romanticism which do not address the capital: the voice of the hero in Balzac’s novels, from Rastignac to novels by Ponson du Terrail, addresses the “Modern Babel” (la Babel Moderne) which is Paris. His novels treat Paris as a character within the novel. Rastignac says: “Hereafter, you and I are Paris!” In Le Club des Valets de Coeur, Sir Williams exclaims: “oh, Paris, Paris! Thou are the real Babel, the real battlefield of the wise men…” (Ponson du Terrail 58) these works are continuously created whose main and ambiguous character is the city and the name of Paris is almost a part of the book title. It is clear that the readers accepted this kind of work. The hero in the Paris novel is also transformed to a modern hero. This hero can be the hero of Pierre Very’s detective novels. The new hero in detective novels which take place in the capital causes a great development in the mythical description of the capital and bridges the deep split between a mysterious Paris and a mythical or modern Paris.
Roger Caillois notes: “At first myth-making resorted to facilities such as the darkness and the mysterious districts of city and occupied overcrowded places. The Louvre, police stations, cafés, etc. And the myths captured the reality everywhere” (74). “The inspector -the hero in the story- travels the city stealthily and during this trip omnibus seems to act as mythical ships” (Chesterton 11) .
The elevation of city life to a new level of myth has undoubtedly been influenced by modernity. Those who know Baudelaire understand the position of the concepts related to modernity in his mind and recognize him as a decisive and vigorous supporter of the modern moral. Regarding the mythical portrayal of the city, Baudelaire praises Balzac and believes he has explained the myth of Paris better than any other. Following this procedure, Victor Hugo joins this movement and writes Les Miserables which is mostly the myth of Paris.
Developing his argument, Baudelaire begins to analyze the modern protagonist of the novel and believes that this protagonist has specific features. Baudelaire and Balzac’s concern “about modernity develops to the extent that they look for it in any trifling thing such as makeup, fashion and the selection of a shirt” (78). Roger Caillois notes: “It is certainly necessary for a mythical city –which is the origin of passions, and motivates even experienced people– to have a powerful and determined hero, who has a mythical authority” (Caillois 79).
According to Caillois’s approach, the modern city, which has become mythical, is the origin of passions and corrupted places which mislead humans from their right path. Caillois states: “For the sake of illuminating the mind, elevating the city to a mythical level means indisputable support for modernity” (75). In a historical overview of French literature, Caillois concludes that Romanticism in the works of Balzac and Baudelaire has been able to make the myth of the city and this might have been the reason for the non-existence of the myth of Paris. Before the 1840s, Romanticism had just begun and the world had not yet experienced modernity, which originated from and emerged in the advancements that took place after the Industrial Revolution. At that time Paris did not have the capacity for becoming a myth in French literature. The circumstances for its transformation into myth were created alongside the emergence of literature mingled with imagination, which was a result of the progress of modernity. Writers like Baudelaire and Balzac turned to this form of imagination and as a result, mythical appearances emerged in their works.
Briefly, “in 1840, a great change took place in the outer world, particularly in the city view. At the same time a mythical concept of the city emerges, which leads to a change in the protagonist of novels and paves the way for a revision of Romantic values” (81).
Paris, a Modern Myth develops Caillois's discussion of Romantic individualism regarding second-generation Romantics, such as Baudelaire and Balzac. “Roger Caillois and his friends established the College of Sociology as an attempt to explore the questions raised by surrealism and the political events during the postwar era. The founders believe that under those circumstances mythology can be defined as an interface between blind social demands and certain obscure needs of the human soul” (Frank 173). There was the question “what is the counterpart of archaic myth in modern society?” Paris, a Modern Myth offers a double answer: it might be literature or it might not.
Caillois “offers a historical, sociodemographic explanation for the general shift in representation of Paris around 1840, for what he calls the poeticization of urban life. He argues that “the elevation of urban life to a mythical status immediately meant a keen commitment to modernity”, that is, to reality, instead of the escapist strategies of previous writers” (174).
Roger Caillois concludes that “the myth of Paris indicates the strange powers of literature and this is a meaningful conclusion” (Caillois 86). According to Baudelaire, “literature as an imaginative concept tries to translate the outer world into mythical language” (86).
Before turning to Sattari’s Myth of Tehran, it is good to refer to Sattari’s opinion on Paris, a Modern Myth, since he has translated it into Persian. Sattari believes that “we can say that Paris as a powerful capital with its s past, no longer has a place in France literature; instead, people’s action and reaction, their judgment, their feeling, the manner of their makeup, and their freedom in expressing their taste have become mythical. It is their total interactions which Sattari calls Parisinaism” (Sattari 246).

Bibliography

Caillois, Roger Paris, a Modern Myth, Trans by Jalal Satari, Tehran: Nashr-e Markaz, 1384.

---. Paris, Mythe Moderne, Le Mythe et I'homme, Paris: Galimard, 1938.

Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. The Defendant. London: Dent, 1901.

Sattari, Jalal. The Myth of Tehran. Tehran: Cultural Research Bureau, 1385.