Literature and Society

Description

1. Prolegomena The purpose of this book is to examine anew and from a number of different perspectives the highly complex and controversial relation between literature and society. This is not meant to be a study in sociology or political science; the analysis of literature - its structure, content, function, and effect - is our primary concern. What we shall try to find out is how the imaginative work is rooted in and grows out of the parent social body, to what extent it is influenced in subject matter as well as form and technique by the domi­ nant climate of ideas in a given historical period, and to what degree and in what manner literature "influences" the society to which it is addressed. The stream of literary influence is of course difficult to trace to its putative source, for here we are not dealing, as in science, with isolated physical phenomena which can be fitted precisely within some cause-and-effect pat­ tern. The relationship between literature and society is far more subtle and complex than social scientists or cultural critics commonly assume. Front Matter....Pages I-VIII Introduction....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 The Asocial Writer....Pages 19-30 A Trinity of the Absurd....Pages 31-45 The Individual Versus Society....Pages 46-56 Revolt and Madness....Pages 57-71 Front Matter....Pages 73-73 The Problem of Definition....Pages 75-82 Shaw the Social Prophet....Pages 83-92 The Social Conscience of the Thirties....Pages 93-105 The Social Criticism of John Dos Passos....Pages 106-117 The Moral Commitment of John Steinbeck....Pages 118-124 The Socioeconomic Motif in the Literature of the Angry Young Men....Pages 125-138 The Call of Conscience....Pages 139-147 The Nemesis of War....Pages 148-155 The Atomic Holocaust....Pages 156-167 The Kingdom of Nightmare and Death....Pages 168-188 Front Matter....Pages 189-189 The Politics of the Writer....Pages 191-197 Ignazio Silone: The Revolutionary Turned Saint....Pages 198-206 The Epic Theater of Bertolt Brecht....Pages 207-220 The Cult of Socialist Realism....Pages 221-240 Front Matter....Pages 241-241 Conclusion....Pages 243-256 Back Matter....Pages 257-266