Can there be an Unbiased Sociology of Literature?

The article presents information on the sociology of literature. The neglect in the sociology literature has been asserted to be sociology's fault: sociology is accused of being too arid, secular and unimaginative to deal adequately with the articulate monuments of that culture, which it claims to study. It is not as if works of literature are ineffable: they have been analyzed and theorized over for centuries. Indeed many would claim there are too many words and theories about literature. This is a constant complaint by those who would like what could be termed a sociological approach to literature-from Madame de Stael's famous comments in her introduction, to the less well-known but equally pertinent remarks of another earliest writer to attempt a comparative study of "poetry as a social institution." What is involved is a fundamental critique of society-a query whether present social and economic relationships are the right and abiding ones. The clear answer is given that they are not but the point here is the question. For Marxists, the structure of society at some point at least includes intellectual institutions, and so these too become open to query-a breach is made in the accustomed unquestioning deference for literary institutions. This comes out in various ways as it affects the sociology of literature. Perhaps the most striking is the Marxist rejection of the assumption that-to put it at its crudest-intellectual and artistic creativity is in itself autonomous and the most potent fact involved in social change.