Science Fiction Studies

#13 = Volume 4, Part 3 = November 1977


Marc Angenot

A Select Bibliography of the Sociology of Literature*

[*This work is part of a research project funded by a Québec FCAC grant.]

The present bibliography is the result of a strict selection. It was established having in mind, beyond a general validity, the specific needs of a critic and scholar dealing with contemporary SF.                

The items treated are of two kinds: entries deemed essential are annotated; entries dealing with a more limited or less central subject-matter, those whose title indicate their object and method so that no further comment is necessary, as well as those whose existence should be signaled to the reader but which are not essential have been left un-annotated. Certain works of high quality but from areas which do not seem useful to an SF critic—such as the sociology of poetry and drama, cultural history of ancient periods, and similar—have been left out in a body. Further, this bibliography does not include 1/ general works on poetics, theory of storytelling (narratology) and theory of literary genres; and 2/ works exclusively on SF or on genres related to SF (Gothic story, fantasy, etc.) Although a number of works from these areas contain sociological consideration I propose to deal with them in other sections of a general critical bibliography of literary theory, also oriented toward the SF critic and scholar, which I am at present working on.                

The bibliography covers items in the principal European languages. As a rule, the first edition of books is adduced. When there are later book editions, only the last one has been retained; in that case, "rpt." means an identical reproduction of the original with the same pagination, and "republ." an edition with different pagination. When the last edition contains changes, it is adduced first in the entry, and the date and/or place of the first edition follows in parenthesis.

1. Bibliographies               

Baldensperger, Fernand, and Werner P. Frienderich. "Second Part: Literature and Politics." Bibliography of Comparative Literature. New York: Russell & Russell, 1960, pp 12-22. (See also other sections of this item, e.g. "Literature and Arts and Science," pp 23-31; "Popular Literature," pp 200-01.)                

Baxandall, Lee, comp. Marxism and Aesthetics: A Selective Annotated Bibliography; Books and Articles in the English Language. New York: Humanities Press, 1968. 261 p.—Marxist scholarship in literature and fine arts. Rather exhaustive; reliable annotations. Unfortunately no adequate index.                

"Bibliographie de la sociologie de la connaissance," Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, 32 (1962): 135-176. An international bibliography in the sociology of knowledge. Ca. 1000 entries.                

Birnbaum, Norman. The Sociological Study of Ideology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1960. 172 p. Indispensable annotated bibliography with synthesizing preface.                

Duncan, Hugh D. "Bibliographical Guide to the Sociology of Literature" (see Duncan, Hugh D., section 3).               

Hansen, Donald A., comp. Mass Communication: A Research Bibliography. Santa Barbara: Glendessary Research Bibliographies, 1968. (8+) 144 p.                

Lehmann-Haupt. Hellmut. One-Hundred Books about Bookmaking: A Guide to the Study and Appreciation of Printing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949 (enlarged edn; original: 1933). 87 p.                

Literature and Society: A Selective Bibliography. [Various eds.] Miami: MLA and University of Miami Press, 1956— (Vol I=1950-1955, vol II=1956-1960, vol III=1961-1965...)                

Marxism and the Mass Media: Towards a Basic Bibliography. New York: International Mass Media Research Center, 1:1972, 2:1973, 3:1974, 4-5: 1976.                

Murphy, Peter, comp. Writings by and about Georg Lukacs. New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1976. 29 p.                

Peck, David R., comp. American Marxist Literary Criticism: 1926-1941: A Bibliography. New York: American Institute for Marxist Studies, 1975. 42 p.                

Rafi-Zadeh, Hassan. International Mass Communications: Computerized Annotated Bibliography. Articles, Dissertations and Theses. Carbondale: Honorary Relation Zone/ International Understanding Series, 1972. (6+) 314p.               

Robine, Nicole, and André Peyronie, "Bibliographie critique sur la Paralittérature," Interférence #3 (January 1973):81-108.               

Schücking, Levin L., and Walther Ebisch. "Bibliographie zur Geschichte der literarischen Geschmacks in England," Anglia, #63 (1939), pp 3-64. A bibliography in the social history of literary taste in Great Britain. Ca. 900 classified entries.               

Shaw, Martin. Marxism Versus Sociology: A Guide to Reading. London: Pluto Press, 1974, non pg.              

Waldmann, Günter. "Literatursoziologie—Trivialliteratur," Theorie und Didaktik der Trivialliteratur: Modellanalysen, Didaktikdiskussion, literar. Wertung. München: Fink, 1973, pp 175-196.

2. Journals               

Communications. Paris: Centre d'étude des communications de masse/Editions du Seuil, 1960—.                

Le Discours social. Bordeaux: ILTAM/Ducros, 1970— (from 1973 on: Paris:Galilée).                

Ideologie:Quaderni di storia contemporanea. Padova: 1967—. (Quarterly).                

Literature and Ideology. Montreal: Spring 1969—. (Quarterly).                

The Minnesota Review, new series. Bloomington IN: 1973—. (Twice a year).

3. Literature and Society: Basic Works               

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetische Theorie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970, 544 p. Art can reconcile the human spirit with nature, beyond the hegemony of conceptual thinking. Centered on the particular, it is necessarily critical rather than ideological. Its inexhaustible polysemy guarantees its autonomy and value as social critique. Very opaque.                

Astier-Loutfi, Martine. Littérature et colonialisme: L'expansion coloniale vue dans la littérature romanesque française, 1871-1914. Paris/La Haye: Mouton, 1971. ix+1147 p.—A model for the critique of ideology in literature with a particular historical phenomenon—in this case French colonial expansion—as starting point.                

Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur. Bern: Francke, 1946. Transl. as Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Garden City NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957. 498 p.—Studies of representative passages from "western" literary works, Homer to V. Woolf, as coded transpositions of reality, differing with each epoch. A masterly close reading of texts, in the best European philological tradition, leads to a description of socio-cultural types of sensibility toward the concrete world.                

Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Voprosy literatury i èstetiki:Issledovaniia raznykh let. Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975. 502p.                

Baxandall, Lee, and Stefan Morawski, eds. Marx and Engles on Literature and Art. ("Introduction" by S.M.) St. Louis/Milwaukee: Telos Press, 1973. 175p.—An anthology of short passages classified in order to show connections between texts of different periods. Useful introduction, but notes and bibliographical references are rather limited.   

Barthes, Roland. Le Degré zéro de l'écriture, suivi de: Eléments de sémiologie. Paris: Gonthier, 1965. 183p. (First part published in 1953.) Trans. as Writing Degree Zero. Preface by S. Sontag. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970. xxv+111 p.—1) Degré zéro: Delineates the concept of "écriture" ("Writing" distinguished from "language" and "style"). "Writing" points to the side the writer takes in historical struggles. Brief description of several political and literary types of "writings" since the bourgeois revolution. Barthes envisions a future "degree zero" of writing, parallel to the "end of history." 2) Eléments de sémiologie: a rather unconvincing personal version of a Saussurian type of semiology, conceived as "a part of linguistics" that "takes into consideration the large (transphrastic) signifying units."                

Bloch, Ernst. "Entfremdung, Verfremdung." Verfremdungen I. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1962, pp 81-90. Transl. as "Entfremdung, Verfremdung: Alienation, Estrangement." Brecht. Ed. Erika Munk. New York: Bantam, 1972, pp, 3-11. —Fundamental approach relating the modalities of contemporary social alienation in capitalist and bureaucratic societies to literary estrangement militating against such an alienation (most clearly in Brecht).                

Bordoni, Carlo. Introduzione alla sociologia della letteratura. Pisa: Pacini, 1974 (revised version; 1st edition: 1972). 151 p.—A survey of the methods and axioms in the various "sociologies" of literature. Emphasis on M. Weber, A. Hauser, G. Lukács, E. Auerbach, R. Escarpit.                

Bouazis, Charles. Littérarité et société: Théorie d'un modèle du fonctionnement littéraire. Paris: Marne, 1972. 254 p.              

Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. xxvi+463 p. (first edn. 1941).—Symbolic systems of "literary action" as social strategies in response to the writer's synchronic and diachronic situation. Rich pioneering and challenging try at integrating consideration of "high" and "low," fictional and nonfictional writings with the "non-symbolic" realm.                

Caudwell, Christopher. Romance and Realism: A Study in English Bourgeois Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970. 144 p.—A classic of the Marxist intellectual generation of the 1930s. Mingles a romantic socialism with a vulgar-materialist reductionism. Today of purely historical value.                

Critique sociologique et critique psychanalytique. Bruxelles: Editions de l'Institut de sociologie, 1970, 238 p.—Essays by various hands by Goldmann disciples and sympathizing Freudian critics.                

Daiches, David. Literature and Society. London: Gollancz, 1938; rpt. Folcroft Press, 1969. 287 p.                

Duncan, Hugh Dalziel. Language and Literature in Society: A Sociological Essay on Theory and Method in the Interpretation of Linguistic Symbols, with a Bibliographical Guide to the Sociology of Literature. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953. 262 p.—Neither much methodology nor accurate facts on specific types of society: philosophical considerations on the social dimension of literature as a symbolic activity. Makes use of noncritical, essentialistic categories: "Literature as magical art," "Literature as make-believe," "Democratic society" (the author's basic sociological concept). Discussion of Kenneth Burke's theories (II, 6 & 7). A useful extensive bibliography for works in English.

Escarpit, Robert, ed. Le Littéraire et le social. Paris: Flammarion, 1970. 315 p.—Essays by various hands on the sociological approach to texts and the sociology of literary institutions. See in particular: R. Escarpit, "Le Littéraire et le social," and "La Définition du terme littérature" (on the concept of literature and its historical ambiguities); J. Dubois, "Pour une critique littéraire sociologique" and C. Bouazis, "La Theorie des structures d'oeuvres" (discussions of the critical standpoints of Auerbach, Goldmann, Barthes, et al.); and several other essays on modern literary production and consumption.                

Fischer, Ernst. Von der Notwendigkeit der Kunst. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst 1959, 203 p. (republ.: Hamburg: Claassen, 1967). Transl. as The Necessity of Art: A Marxist Approach. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. 234 p.—Far from being gratuitous, art fulfils an essential function in society. F. analyses the artist's conflict as well as his forced involvement with bourgeois society, and criticizes the traditional opposition between content and form. Though idealist rather than Marxist, it can be credited for tackling some fundamental questions.                

Frye, Northrop. The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971. 174 p.                

Fügen, Hans Norbert, ed. Wege der Literatursoziologie. Neuwied, Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968. 479 p.—A very rich anthology of literary sociology, in two parts: historical (from Tocqueville to Lukács) and theoretical (sociocritical analysis of content and form: Sengle, Adorno, Goldmann ...; paraliterature: Nutz; the writer's status: Köhler, Lord ...; external sociology, consumption, public and literary institution: Escarpit, Auerbach, Löwenthall...). Useful introduction, international bibliography and index. (See also his Die Hauptrichtungen der Literatursoziologie und ihre Methoden. Bonn: Bouvier, 1964. vii+215 p.; rpt. 1968.)        

Glicksberg, Charles I. The Literature of Commitment. Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 1976. 467 p.—Emphasizing the responsibility of the writer, this is a concrete historical study of various forms of the writer's political commitment in the 20th century—from Céline to Brecht and Solzhenitsyn.

Glicksberg, Charles I. Literature and Society. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1972. viii+266 p.                

Goldmann, Lucien. Pour une sociologie du roman. Paris: Gallimard, 1969 (first edn 1964). 373 p.—Drawing on Lukács' Theory of the Novel, G. establishes a homology between the structure of the novel (a demonic research of authentic values in a degraded society) and the structure of the capitalist market economy. The present evolution of the novel as a genre (Malraux, Robbe-Grillet) is linked with changes and crises in Western capitalism, Lukács' concept of refification being G.'s main critical tool. A seminal work for European literary sociology, although challenged today by further developments.               

Goldmann, Lucien. Structures mentales et création culturelle. Paris: Anthropos, 1970. 494 p.—A collection of articles, some of a general theoretical interest. Develops a methodology combining the "immanent" analysis of literary structures and the "over-arching" sociological explanation of texts. See also, re: L. Goldmann: Problémes d'une sociologie du roman. Bruxelles: Editions de l'Institut de sociologie, 1963. 242 p— Littérature et société. Ibidem, 1967. 223 p.— Sociologie de la littérature: Recherches récentes et discussions (special issue of Revue de l'Institut de sociologie, 3[19691. Ibidem, 1969. 240 p.                

Gramsci, Antonio. Letteratura e vita nazionale. Torino: Einaudi, 1950 (rpt 1966), 400 p. (Partly transl. in his Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971. 483 p.; rpt. 1975.)                

Grivel, Charles. Production de l'intérêt romonesque: Un état du texte (1870-1880), un essai de constitution de sa théorie. Paris. The Hague: Mouton, 1973. 428 p. + Vol II: Hoofddorp: Hoekstra, 1973, non pg. Attempts to establish theoretical bases for an all-embracing sociohistorical analysis of the narrative. Endeavours to combine narrative semiotics (Greimas) and Marxist explanation by showing the subordination of the novel to the dominant ideology.                

Guerard, Albert. Literature and Society. Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1935; rpt. New York: Kraus, 1972. 451 p.—A discussion of the historical perspective and social history of literary institutions. Rather conservative and mystifying: "race, environment, moment" as background of literature; "the enigma of genius"; etc. Part IV, "To-morrow," attempts to deal with the utopian elements in the writer's conception of his art.                

Hauser, Arnold. Sozialgeschichte der Kunst und Literatur I-II. Munich: Beck, 1953. Transl. as The Social History of Art I-IV. New York: Vantage, n.d. (1962).—An encyclopedic historical survey of literature and the arts from prehistory to the "film age" as shaped by social circumstances. Patchy, and its approach—a synthesis of the best European views up to ca. 1940—may be dated by now, but still the best elementary overview available in English.       

Howe, Irving. Politics and the Novel. New York: Meridian Books, 1957, 251 p.                

Howe, Irving. A World More Attractive: A View of Modern Literature and Politics. New York: Horizon Press, 1963. xii+307 p.—Essays about "'the modern' [style of experience and perception] marked by a crisis of conduct and belief," from T.E. Lawrence to Mailer. The "mass society"—where class status becomes less visible, centers of authority dissolve, and a general passivity and social dependence ensues—has a corresponding "post-modern fiction," between rebellion, agnosticism and confusion. Includes essay on "anti-utopia" by Zamiatin, Orwell, Huxley, who fear that "the long-awaited birth will prove to be a monster," and an axiomatic description of this genre's formal devices.                

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971. xix+432 p. An authoritative synthesis of Marxist literary theory as well as incisive critique of several Marxist or para-Marxist thinkers—Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Sartre, Bloch, Lukács. In chap. 5 establishes the bases of Marxist criticism and its connection with contiguous theories (formalism, sociology of literature, hermeneutics). The best English introduction to "dialectical" criticism.                

Laqueur, Walter, and George L. Mosse, eds. Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century. New York & Evanston: Harper & Row, n.d. 219 p. (originally publ. as the "Literature and Society" issue of Journal of Contemporary History 2:2 [1967].—Studies on some writers (Rolland, Mann, Eliot, Sartre, etc.) and intellectual movements.                

Laurenson, Diana, and Alan Swingewood. The Sociology of Literature. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1972. 281 p.—Three parts: "Theory" (with emphasis on Lukács, Goldmann and structuralism); "The Writer and Society" (penetrating international and historical survey: the influence of the book trade on the writer's status); 3 essays on the "Sociology of the Novel" (notions of "alienation" and "unhappy consciousness"). Includes a consideration of Orwell: his literary strength but also his one-sided political view.                

Leenhardt, Jacques. Lecture politique du roman: "La Jalousie" d'Alain Robbe-Grillet. Paris: Editions du Minuit, 1973. 277 p.—An interesting application of Goldmann's socio-critical theories.                

Lenin, V.I., O.L.N. Tolstom. Moskva, Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1969. 191 p. (First publ. 1908-11) Transl. as Tolstoy and His Time. New York: International Publishers, 1952. n.p.

"Literature and Society." Yale French Studies #40 (1968).—On French 18th century.                

Litérature et idéologie. Paris: La Nouvelle Critique, 1971. 317 p.—Texts from the 1970 Cluny International Colloquium of Marxist critics, reevaluating theses and concepts of esthetics. A collection of highly valuable discussions.

"Littérature. Recherches—fonctions—perspectives." Recherches internationales à la lumière du marxisme #87 (2) (1976). —Translation of recent Soviet research in literary theory, with some contributions from East Germany and Poland. Marxist criticism but also semiotic methods.                

Lowenthal, Leo. "Literature and Sociology." The Relations of Literary Study: Essays on Interdisciplinary Contributions. Ed. J. Thorpe. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1967, pp 89-110.                

Lowenthal, Leo. Literature and the Image of Man: Sociological Studies of the European Drama and Novel, 1600-1900. Boston: Beacon Press, 1957. 242 p.—Analysis of the rise and fall of individualism in some principal European novelists and dramatists. Useful identification of historical, sociological and philosophical determinants of literature, which is, however, judged primarily as vehicle for ideas.                

Lukács, Georg. Essays über Realismus. Werke IV. Neuwied & Berlin: Luchterhand, 1971. 678 p. (Partly transl. as The Meaning of Contemporary Realism. London: Merlin Press, 1963, and partly as Realism in Our Time. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.)—L's classical theoretical texts, being a critique of bourgeois concepts of realism and a redefinition of "critical realism" and its "class content," which, however, remains unclear. See particularly the part on the "present significance of critical realism" (pp 457-603; publ. separately as Wider den missverstandenen Realismus), where he rejects Kafka—with his "panic fear of reality" and "artistically appealing decadence"—in favor of Th. Mann.                

Lukács, Georg. Der historische Roman. [East] Berlin: Aufbau, 1955. 393 p. Transl. as The Historical Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969. 435 p.—A classical analysis of social and historical conditions of a literary genre in its relations to changing conceptions of history, which determine it. It develops between the poles of the bourgeois cult of great leaders and of democratic humanism.                

Lukács, Georg. Schriften zur Literatursoziologie. Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961 (and 1968), 568 p. —The complete collection of L's texts from 1909 to 1951 regarding literary sociology. To be read with his major works: Die Seele und die Formen (1911), Die Theorie des Romans (1920), Essays über den Realismus (1948), Balzac und der französische Realismus (1952), Der historische Roman (1955).                

Macherey, Pierre. Pour une théorie de la production littéraire. Paris: François Maspero, 1966, 332 p.—Establishes a Marxist theory of literature, based on laws of production rather than on paradigms for consumption. Develops such concepts as "ideological project," "figuration" and "thematic clue." Includes a long chapter on Jules Verne, whose narrative rhetoric masks and transposes the ideology of industrial capitalism.                

Munteano, B[ernard]. Constantes dialectiques en littérature et en histoire. Problèmes, recherches, perspectives. Paris: Didier, 1967, 408 p.—From a comparatist's point of view, attempts to reconcile the critic and the historian, and seeks existential and anthropological constants in literature. These constants are paradoxically perceived as variable because historically fluctuating. Scrutinizes some such "variable constants," in rhetoric, in realistic narrative (verisimilitude and "local color") and in systems of values (e.g. the topos of reason vs heart). An original work, independent from "official" theories, which reevaluates a large number of problems pertaining to long-range cultural traditions.                

Prevost, Claude. Littérature, politique, idéologie. Preface by R. Leroy. Paris: Editions sociales, 1973, 275 p.—Studies on Malraux, Aragon, Thibaudeau, Tolstoi (as seen by Lenin), Kafka, from a so-called official Marxist-Leninist point of view. A mechanical application of the notions of "the real," "the political," "ideology," "representation" and "form."

Rockwell, Joan. Fact in Fiction: The Use of Literature in the Systematic Study of Society. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, 211 p.—Fiction is "not only a representation of social reality but also a functional part of social control." Criticizes the notion of realism. Discusses the use of fiction for information about social institutions, norms and customs. Examples taken from ancient Greek literature, classic English fiction, modern British paraliterature (spy fiction, etc.). An interesting work, although sometimes narrowly empirical and simplistic.                

Rühle, Jurgen. Literatur und Revolution. Kö1n: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1960. Transl. as Literature and Revolution: A Critical Study of the Writer and Communism in the Twentieth Century. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969. 520 p               

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Qu'est-ce que la littérature? Paris: Gallimard, 1964, 375 p. (Originally published as part of Situations II. Paris, 1948).                

"Sociology of Literary Creativity." International Social Science Journal. 19: 4(1967): 493-616. —A special issue presenting a good introduction to the sociology of literature from the Marxist point of view. Contains articles by J. Leenhardt, L. Goldmann, G.N. Pospelov, G. Lukács, U. Eco: highly relevant texts, illustrating the various methodological aspects of the problem.                

Spearman, Diana. The Novel and Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, 256 p.—To be compared with I. Watt (in this section). Field of inquiry extended to the Middle Ages and even to China. Refutes Watt's thesis of the middle-class origin of the novel in the 18th century, since it is a cumulative transformation of earlier forms of fiction. A more universal study of the novel could indicate that nostalgia for the past was responsible for the rise of the novel. Stresses also the individual contribution of the writer to the emergence of new literary forms.                

Strelka, Joseph. Die gelenkten Musen. Dichtung und GeselIschaft. Wien, Frankfurt & Zürich: Europa, 1971. 414 p.               

Trilling, L. The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. New York: Viking Press, 1950, xvi+303 p.               

Vassen, Florian. Methoden der Literaturwissenschaft: Marxistische Literaturtheorie und Literatursoziologie. Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag, 1972. 186 p.—A survey of German Marxist criticism from Marx and Engels to Adorno as differing from German positivistic literary sociology followed by an anthology.                

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. London: Chatto and Windus/Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957, 319 p.—On the whole, an incisive introduction to the social history of the novel and of the realist mode, by way of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding. Yet there are some ambiguities in his notion that realism is necessarily linked with the novel genre. Interesting survey of the 18th-century changes in book trade and reading public, and of bourgeois values and expectations—individualism, valuation of love and courtship, new type of heroism and its burlesque transposition (Fielding)—which result in the emergence of the (realistic) novel as the dominant literary form.                

Wellershoff, Dieter. Literatur und Veränderung: Versuche zu einer Metakritik der Literatur. Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1969. 185 p.                

Zeraffa, Michel. Roman et société. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971. 183p.—A short synthesis of various sociological approaches to the novel. A history of the novel as an ideological entity, through the successive social roles it has played. (See also Z's larger work in the same field: Personne et personnage: Le romanesque des années 1920 aux années 1950. Paris: Klincksieck, 1969. 494 p.

4. Ideology and literature. (Works on utopia as ideology—but not as a literary genre—are included into this section.)               

Adorno, Theodor W. Soziologische Schriften, I-II. Ed. R. Tiedemann. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972-1975. 2 vols.

Althusser, Louis. "Les Appareils idéologiques d'Etat," La Pensée, No. 151 (1970). pp. 1-38.—An important theoretical essay on ideologies as "realized in institutions, their rituals and practices." Their ensemble constitutes the "ideological State mechanisms," which are necessary for "the reproduction of relations of production."                

Baldini, Messimo. Il Linguaggio delle Utopie. Utopia e ideologia: una rilettura epistemologica. Roma: Studium, 1974. 265 p.—A reevaluation of the notional pair utopia vs. ideology in the wake of modern epistemology. Utopian thought is seen as an extreme dogmatism and orthodoxy. Mannheim's sociology of knowledge (see in this section) is criticized for conceptual imprecision.                

Barth, Hans. Wahrheit und Ideologie. Zürich: Erlenbach, 1961, 327 p. (First edn Zürich: Manesse, 1945).—Presents ideological criticism as an attempt toward the conquest of truth, from Bacon to Marx and Nietzsche. The analogies and differences in the doctrine of ideology of the latter two philosophers are discussed. Pleads against both for truth as transcendental.                

Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung I-II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1959. 1657 (In French as Le Principe espérance. Paris: Gallimard, 1976—).—A major work by one of the great non-dogmatic Marxist philosophers of our times. A critique of all closed systems and orthodoxies, putting utopian thought into the center of materialist dialectics, which leads to an informed Hope. To that end surveys all the major existing political, medical, architectural, etc. utopias, annexing to it all open-ended horizons: Being cannot be understood without such horizons and such a final orientation.                

Bluher, Rudolf. Moderne Utopien: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus. Bonn & Leipzig: Schroder, 1920. vii+117 p.                

Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millenium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Revised and enlarged edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. 412 p. (1st edn London: 1957).—Though dealing with medieval material, this is an essential clarification of relationships between ideological and religious marginality, utopian social criticism, and tendencies toward sexual liberation. It provides basic elements for a theory of subversivity in Judeo-Christian civilization.                

"Cultural Studies and Theory." Working Papers in Cultural Studies, #6 (1968).Special issue of a journal published in Birmingham, UK.                

Currie, Robert. Genius: An Ideology in Literature. London: Chatto and Windus, 1974, 222 p.—A critique of the quasi-religious and mystified notion of genius as it has developed from Romanticism to Modernism. Instead of the axiom: "Humanity needs genius to rescue it from alienation," a "truly this-worldly culture" will accept society "seriously and critically" as permanently alienated, without trying to forge transcendental alibis.

Desroche, Henri. Les Religions de contrebande. Paris: Marne, 1974. 232 p.                

Dumont, Fernand. Les Idéologies. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974. 183 p.—The best synthesis of theories of ideology, with a critique of this notion as used by Marxists and other currents.                

Duveau, Georges. Sociologie de l'utopie et autres essais: Ouvrage posthume. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961. 193p.—A collection of variegated essays mainly on 19th-Century utopias and their role in everyday history. Weakened by a tendency to find ahistorical human archetypes behind the utopian systems.                

Faye, Jean-Pierre. Théorie du récit. Introduction aux "Langages totalitaires": Critique de la Raison I'Economie narrative. Paris: Hermann, 1972. 140 p.—"History is, first of all, a narrative (a story)"; "history is produced by being narrated": these are the basic assumptions of Faye's criticism of "narrative reason" (i.e. ideological production in history). A seminal work for ideological criticism of literature though it sometimes degenerates into simple paradox. To be linked with Faye's Langages totalitaires (Paris: 1972), a theory of the historical narrative of fascism.                

Foucault, Michel. L'Ordre du discours. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. 81 p.—An excellent brief synthesis of Foucault's method, which attempts to delimit the notion of "discourse" as superordinated to "genre," ideology" and even "discipline," and as the key concept of an "archeology of knowledge."                

Gabel, Joseph. La Fausse conscience; Essai sur la réification. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1962. 264 p.—Latching on to the Marxist criticism of alienation and reification (Lukács), Gabel develops a theory of "false consciousness" as the resistance to dialectics and the corollary of class alienation. Points out the analogy between false consciousness and schizophrenia (mental rigidity, loss of the temporal dimension).                

Habermas, Jürgen. Technik und Wissenschaft als "Ideologie". Frankfurt a,M.: Suhrkamp, 1968. 169 p. (In French as La Technique et la science comme idéologie. Paris: Gallimard, 1974. xliv+214 p.; partly translated in his Toward A Rational Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970, chs. 3-6, and partly in Knowledge and Human Interests. Ibid., 1971, Appendix.)—A Marxist criticism of technocracy, of the integration of the scientific-technical complex into the ruling economic and political apparatus. The consequences are politization of science, and "scientification" of politics, including the repressive apparatus.

Haddad, Gérard. "La Littérature dans l'idéologie," La Pensée, #151 (1970); 88-99.                

Hauser, Arnold. "Propaganda, Ideology and Art." Aspects of History and Class Consciousness. Ed. I. Meszaros. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971, pp. 128-51.                

Jakubowski, Franz. Der ideologische Ueberbou in der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung. Frankfurt: Neue Kritik, 1968 (1st edition: Danzig: 1936). 122 p. (In French as Les Superstructures idéologiques dans la conception matérialiste de l'histoire. Paris: E.D.I., 1971. 221 p.)—A classic Marxist theory of ideology, developing the notions of "correct" vs. "mystified" consciousness, of the "unity of theory and practice," of the vanguard political party as the bearer of proletarian class-consciousness.                

Kofter, Leo. Der asketische Eros: Industriekultur und Ideologie. Wien, Frankfurt & Zürich: Europa, 1967. 340 p.

Lenk, Kurt, ed. Ideologiekritik und Wissensoziologie. Neuwied & Berlin: Luchterhand, 1964. 413 p.                

Lukács, Georg. Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein. Neuwied & Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968 (Ist edition Berlin: 1923). 733 p. Transl. as History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971. xlvii+356 p.—Lukács's most important general theoretical work, developing the key concepts of "totality" and "mediation." A critique of reification in capitalism, a theory of the role of the proletariat and its vanguard party as the adequate expression of the maximal possible class-consciousness.                

Mannheim, Karl. Ideologie und Utopie. Bonn: Cohen, 1929. Transl. as Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970. 354 p. (1st translation: New York 1936).—The fundamental work of Mannheim's sociology of knowlege, opposing ideology (found in ruling and conservative classes) to utopia (found in rising classes and therefore oriented towards the future).                

Mannheim, Karl. Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952. 322 p.

Manuel, Frank E., ed. Utopias and Utopian Thought. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967, 321 p.                

Marcuse, Herbert. One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1966. xvii+260 p.—A description of tendencies in contemporary US society, using tools of Marxian and Freudian critique. It is a closed society stifling critical ferment, where repression is largely interiorized. Its one-dimensional (neo-positivist) thought neutralizes critical rationalism.                

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Die Deutsche Ideologie: Kritik der neuesten Deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repräsentanten, Feuerbach, B. Bauer und Stirner. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1960. 695 p. Transl. as The German Ideology.... Moscow: Progress, 1964. 736 p.—A work of Marx's and Engels's youth (1845/46) published only in 1932. Critique of ideological premises in German neo-Hegelianism. An essential work, since it is—together with their Holy Family (1845)—the only one to show their method applied to philosophical and literary "superstructures."

Meszaros, Istvan. Marx's Theory of Alienation. London: Merlin, 1970. 356 p.                

Neusüss, Arnhelm, ed. Utopie: Begriff und Phänomen des Utopischen. Neuwied & Berlin: Luchterhand, 1968. 523 p.               
Rossi-Landi, Ferrucio. Il Linguaggio come lavoroe e come mercato. Milano: Bompiani, 1968, 254 p.—Extension of the Marxist theory of economics to the production of signification (language) and the productive labor implied. A tentative to integrate serniotics and logical empiricism into Marxist criticism. (See also his Semiotica e ideologie. Milano: Bompiani, 1972; Ideologies of Linguistic Relativity. The Hague: Mouton, 1973; and Linguistics and Economics. The Hague: Mouton, 1975.)                

Ruyer, Raymond. L'Utopie et les Utopies. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950, 292 p. (See also his Les Nuisances idéologiques. Paris: Calmann-Lévi, 1972, 342 p.)

Sanguineti, Edoardo. Ideologia e linguaggio. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1970, 137 p.                

Schücking, Levin. Die Soziologie der literarischen Geschmacksbildung. (1st edn München, 1923) 3rd and revised edn: Bern & München: Francke, 1961, 1l1 p. Transl. as The Sociology of Literary Taste. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966, 112 p.—A classic in the history of cultural taste and esthetic values, "sociologizing" the notion of the Spirit of the Age. To be read also for his views on the sociology of literary institutions (groups, schools, fans, cleavage in the public, public recognition, values accorded to the "new," etc.)                

Vadée, Michel. L'Idéologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1973. 96 p.—An excellent anthology of essential Marxist texts defining ideology and describing its functions, with V's comments.                

Veyne, Paul. Comment on écrit I'histoire: Essai d'épistémologie. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971. 349 p.                

Volpe, Galvano della. Critica dell'ideologia contemporanea: Saggi di teoria dialettica. Roma: Editori riuniti, 1967. 156 p.—A Marxist critique of various contemporary cultural and scientific ideologies, in particular structuralism. (See also his Critica del gusto. Milano: Feltrinella, 1966. 272 p.)

Walton, Paul, and Stuart Hall. Situating Marx. Human Context Books, 1972. 167p.                

Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780-1950. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958. xx+363 p. (Also New York: Harper & Row, 1966).—A key work for the social history of culture, simultaneously a history of intellectual opinions on cultural phenomena, of various ideologies about them, and of their inner contradictions. Discusses cultural values and notions such as Mass, Democracy, Equality, etc. A remarkable example of materialist criticism of cultural ideologies.

Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus, 1961 (revised edn Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1965. 299 p.)—Elements of a theory of culture, in continuation of Culture and Society. Discussions of basic theoretical concepts: "the creative mind," "culture," "individual" and "society." Critical historical description of British culture, its aspects and institutions such as education, readership, the writer's status, language...Part three, on "Britain in the 1960's" and the "long revolution" we are living through, is a penetrating analysis of the present social and existential changes. An essential work, written simply but accurately, with depth, lucidity and balance.                

Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. (London: Fontana; New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. 286 p.                

Zeitland, Irving M. Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968. x+326 p.                

Zeltner, Hermann. Ideologie und Wahrheit: Zur Kritik der politischen Vernunft. Stuttgart: Fromann, 1966. 162 p.

5. Sociology of literary institutions and of mass culture. (See also next section, Paraliterature.)                

Altick, Richard D., The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. ix+430 p.—"An attempt to study, from the historian's viewpoint, the place of reading in an industrial and increasingly democratic society." Does not try for a synthesis, but for a scholarly examination of all the commercial, economical, political and psycho-historical influences on the reading public, its extension and its preferences, and on the book trade, periodicals and newspapers.                

Benjamin, Walter. "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit," Schriften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1955. Transl. as "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in W. Benjamin. Illuminations. Ed. H. Arendt. New York: Schocken, 1969, pp. 217-51—The fundamental essay on how technical reproducibility changes men's perception of art by dismantling the "aura" of "uniqueness" due to the art-object's distance. This leads to the emancipation of art from "cult value" in favor of "exhibition value" for a mass audience (photography, film). The mass audience acquire now the potential for expertise that only a few had earlier, but they are also confronted with the choice between the Fascist aesthetization of political life in imperialist wars, or the conscious Communist politicizing of art.                

Berelson, Bernard, and Lester Asheim. The Library's Public. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. xx+174 p.

Cazeneuve, Jean, et al., eds. Les Communications de masse, guide alphabétique. Paris: Danoël-Gonthier, 1976. 512 p.               

"La Censure et le censurable." Communications #9 (1967). 160 p.—A collection of articles, some historical and some sociopolitical, on censorship, but most importantly also attempts at a semiotic theory of censorship (le Censurable) linked with institutional criticism. Short international bibliography and a first chronology of a future history of censorship. 

Corsini, Gianfranco. L'Istituzione letteraria. Napoli: Liguori, 1974. 308 p.—Short articles on various aspects of literature as primarily an institution.                

Defleur, Melvin L. Theories of Mass Communication. New York: McKay, 1975. (1st edn 1966). xx+288 p.

Doubrovsky, Serge, and Tzvetan Todorov, eds. L'Enseignement de la littérature. Paris: Plon, 1971, 640 p.—Articles on philosophy of literature-teaching, literature and social sciences, pedagogy, with an international survey.  

Dumazedier, Joffre, and Jean Hassenforder. Eléments pour une sociologie comparée de la production, de la diffusion et de l'utilisation du livre. Paris: Cercle de la librairie, 1962. 100 p. (also Bibliographie de la France, CLI, 5th series, ## 24-27, 2nd Part, "Chroniques," fasc. 1 to 6)                

Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1977, xv+389 p. (1st edn. Milano, 1964)—E's studies on mass culture blend semiotics and sociology and construct original mediations between them. A panoramic overview, largely on comics, with a brief article on SF. The title identifies two extreme and uncritical attitudes toward mass media—the "integrated" who accept it fully and the "apocalyptic" who reject it wholly. E. pleads for a third, discriminating way.                

Engelsing, Rolf. Der Bürger als Leser: Lesergeschichte in Deutschland, 1500-1800. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlag, 1974, 375 p.—On the German bourgeois as reader.                

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. Einzelheiten, I-II. Frankfurt: Suhrkamkp, 1952-1954. Partly trans. as The Consciousness Industry: On Literature, Politics and the Media. New York: Seabury Press, 1974. 184 p.

Escarpit, Robert. Sociologie de la littérature. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968 (=revised edn: 1st edn 1958). 128 p. Transl. as Sociology of Literature. London: Cass, 1965 (2nd edn: 1971). 104 p.—Historical survey giving mostly French and British examples for the status of the writer, his conditions of existence, the literary institutions (publishing, distributing, consuming). External sociology based upon statistical data. Criticism of the concept of literary generations.               

Escarpit, Robert. Théorie générale de l'information et de la communication. Paris: Hachette, 1976. 220 p.   

Escarpit, Robert, and Charles Bouazis, eds. Systèmes partiels de communication. Paris & The Hague: Mouton, 1972. 225 p.—Selection of studies on the book and literature in mass communications within advanced technological societies (press, politics, education, audiovisual arts). Describes various trends in the communication theory,—but considers a synthesis impossible at present.                

Hart, James D., The Popular Book: A History of America's Literary Taste. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950 (Republ. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963. 351 p.)—The social background of America's popular reading from the Pilgrims' time to the 1950's, epoch by epoch. Systematic connections between literary taste and the ensemble of sociological and ideological changes in each period.                

Hiller, Helmut. Zur Sozialgeschichte von Buch und Buchhandel. Bonn: Bouvier, 1966. 213 p.—An encyclopedic history of the book in the Western world (mainly in Germany). The book is treated as a material object, from a technical and commercial point of view. Clear and very erudite, an excellent reference book.                

Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-class Life with Special Reference to Publications and Entertainments. London: Chatto and Windus, 1957. 319 p.—A remarkable balance between erudition and an overall critical vision. Describes working-class leisure forms, researches present tendencies in mass culture. "The earnest minority" of the working-class has a surprising resilience to majority tastes. The old forms of class culture are in danger of being replaced by a poorer kind of "faceless" culture.

Jacobs, Norman, ed. Culture for the Millions? Mass Media in Modern Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964 (and 1971). xxv+200 p.—An interesting though inconclusive collection of papers presented at a Daedalus seminar in 1959. See particularly E. Shils, "Mass Society and its Culture" (in favor of the diffusion of "superior culture" in mass society); and L. Lowenthal, "An Historical Preface to the Popular Culture Debate."                

Joseph, Michael, and Grant Overton. The Commercial Side of Literature. New York & London: Harper & Brothers, 1926, 274 p.—Originally, a purely practical handbook. Today, an excellent historical document about the American literary market 50 years ago.                

Koller, Leo. Zur Theorie der modernen Literatur: Der Avantgardismus in soziologischer Sicht. Neuwied & Berlin: Luchterhand, 1962. 286 p.                

Leavis, Q[ueenie] D. Fiction and the Reading Public. London: Chatto & Windus, 1932. xvi+348 p. (rpt. 1965, 1968)—State of British mass literature in the 1930's and the historical causes of its development (the birth of journalism, growth and disintegration of the reading public). An elitist and dated work, still interesting where its value preconceptions do not distort the data.                

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962. 294 p. (rpt. 1969)—Invention of printing as the cultural revolution of modern civilization. Offhanded and risky generalizations from King Lear to Joyce, from Gutenberg to modern "mass media." A firework of ideas, sometimes profound, sometimes reductionist and dubious.                

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. New York & Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1965. xiii+365p. (1st edn. 1964.)—"The medium is the rnessage"—i.e. "All media are active metaphors in their power to translate experience into new forms." The consequences of any medium "result from the new scale that is introduced in our affairs by each extension of ourselves." Media can be hot or cold, a "hot medium" being one that provides a sense with a large amount of data, and implies a "low participation." An inventive set of hypotheses followed by an attempt at typological description of communication, but never confirmed by concrete historical and social analyses.                

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage (sic). New York: Random House. 1967. 157 p.               

Miller, William. The Book Industry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1949. xiv+156 p.—A report of the American Public Library Inquiry (Social Science Research Council). All the data and statistics on the book trade and the public libraries. With a bibliography.                

Moles, Abraham, and Claude Zeltmann, eds. La Communication. Paris: Centre d'Etude et de promotion de la lecture, 1971. 575 p. (republ. Verviers: Gérard, 1973. x+758 p.)                

Morin, Edgar. L'esprit du temps: Essais sur la culture de masse. Paris: Grasset, 1962. 280 p.

Morin, Violette. L'Ecriture de presse. Paris & The Hague: Mouton, 1969.                

Mott, Frank Luther. Golden Multitudes: The Story of BestSellers in the UnitedStates. New York: MacMillan Company, 1947. xii+357 p.—Mostly anecdotal history of bestsellers, 1670-1945, with a wealth of factual data, including much on the successes of SF and fantasy.     

Plant, Marjorie. The English Book Trade: An Economic History of the Making and Sale of Books. London: Allen & Unwin, 1974 (1st edn 1932). 3+520 p.—An excellent source on the history of material book manufacture, from paper to labor organization, finances and copyrights. A huge amount of data, yet clear and readable.                

Rosenberg, Bernard, and David Manning White, eds. Mass Culture Revisited. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971. xii+473 p.—Collection of articles by various hands, based on common sense and empirical enquiries rather than on clear theoretical approaches. Interesting because of the great majority of problems and subjects treated. Few of them deal with printed fiction; see however section 6: "Spy Fiction."                

(See also a previous collection of essays by the same editors: Mass Culture: The Popular Art in America. New York: The Free Press/London: Collier-Macmillan, 1957. 561 p. (republ. 1963].)                

Widmer, Kingsley and Eleanor, eds. Literary Censorship: Principles, Cases, Problems. San Francisco: Wadsworth Publications, 1961. 182 p. (See also, on same topic: Widmer, Eleanor, comp. Freedom and Culture: Literary Censorship in the 70's. Belmont: Wadsworth Publications, 1970. vi+216 p.)                

Williams, Raymond. Communications (revised edn). London: Chatto and Windus, 1966 (also Harmondsworth, 1970). 193 p.

6. Paraliterature.               

Angenot, Marc. Le Roman populaire: Recherches en paralittérature. Montréal: Presses de l'Université de Québec, 1975. x+145 p.—Studies on French popular literature 1830-1914, with an attempt at defining the concept of paraliterature using both internal, narrative analysis and external, sociological analysis of production and consumption. With an international bibliography of paraliterature studies.                

Bayer, Dorothee. Der Triviale Familien—und Liebesroman im 20.Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1963. 184 p.—A study of paraliterary love romance and family story. A typological and socio-historical synthesis, mainly on German material.                

Boileau—[, Pierre, and Thomas] Narcejac. Le Roman policier. Paris: Pavot, 1964.235 p.—Historical panorama of detective novel by two well-known authors. An empirical discussion of the genre's constants and techniques.

Buchloh, Paul G., and Jens P. Becker. Der Detektivroman: Studien zur Geschichte und Form der englischen und amerikanischen Detektiuliteratur. Mit Beiträgen von A. Wulff und W.T. Rix. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973. 199 p.—Studies in history and form of the English and American detective literature.  

Burger, Christa. Textanalyse als Ideologiekritik: Zur Rezeption zeitgenössiger Unterhaltungsliteratur. Frankfurt: Athanaum, 1973. 175 p.—A theoretical approach to paraliterature: ideological criticism through text analysis. Followed by studies on German "realistic" popular novels.                

Bürger, Heinz Otto, ed. Studien zur Trivialliteratur. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1962, viii+270 p.—Collection of high level essays, mostly on 19th Century phenomena.                

Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976. viii+336 p.—Proposes "formula analysis," i.e. analyzing the "structure of narrative or dramatic conventions employed in a great number of literary works." The value of popular fiction is measured by its degree of uniqueness within the given framework. Interesting conception, but of rather limited relevance.                

Conrad, Horst. Die literarische Angst: Das Schreckliche in Schauerromantik und Detektivgeschichte. Düsseldorf: Bertelmann Universitätsverlag, 1974. 230 p.—Horror and pity—related to the Uncanny—as esthetic categories in the British Gothic novel, Hoffmann and the detective novel (Poe). Ideas of "delightful horror," "ceremonialization of horror"; narrator-reader dialectics in terms of pleasure in horror. There is a "historical dialectics of the horror-literature," as against the concept of an anthropological horror-potential. With bibliography.                

Dalziel, Margaret. Popular Fiction 100 Years Ago: An Unexplored Tract of Literary History. London: Cohen & West, 1957. 188 p.                

Diez-Borque, José-Maria. Literatura y Cultura demasas: Estudio de la novela subliteraria. Madrid: Al-Boprak, 1972. 261 p.—Deals with popular stories in Spain using converging methods: external sociology (field research), theory of communication, statistics, genre theory, ideological analysis. The psycho-social function of these writings is to diminish the reader's frustration and unhappiness with his status. Affirms the necessity to treat mass culture without reference to "high" culture. Mass culture is petty-bourgeois rather than proletarian. A few pages on popular SF.

Entretiens sur la paralittérature. Paris: Plon, 1970. 475 p.                

Giesz, Ludwig. Phänomenologie des Kitsches: Ein Beitrag zur anthropologischen Ästhetik. München: Fink, 1971 (= enlarged edn.; originally: Heidelberg, 1960). 103 p.

"Grandeur de la littéature populaire." Magazine littéraire #9 (July-August 1967).                

Harper, Ralph. The WorId of the Thriller. Cleveland: Case Western Reserve University, 1969. 139 p.—Typology, themes, roles and topical characters, devices and values of the thriller. Psycho-sociological approach to the reader. A stimulating but methodologically fairly shallow work.                

Haycraft, Howard. The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946. ix+545 p. (also: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1947. ix+565 p.)                

James, Louis. Fiction for the Working Man, 1830-1850: A Study of the Literature Produced for the Working Class in Early Victorian Urban England. London: Oxford University Press, 1963. xiv+226 p.—An admirable study of social history, with precise information on industrial society's urban life and its increasing reading public. Studies influences, thematic and geneological traditions, foreign contributions (US and French). The rather limited ideological interpretation goes no further than the concept of "urban mentality": "In a democratic urban...civilization, the very existence of a humanized society depends on a creative and liberal popular culture."                

Journal of Popular Culture. Bowling Green OH, 1966—.—The only US journal to treat popular culture in all its manifestations. Most contributors prefer empirical—sometimes trivial—discussions to any consciously theoretical approach.

Killy, Walther. Deutscher Kitsch: Ein Versuch mit Beispielen. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1962. 168 p.—Anthology of German literary Kitsch 1816-1933, preceded by an attempt at characterizing and defining the phenomenon.                

Langenbucher, Wolfgang. Der aktuelle Unterhaltungsroman: Beiträge zu Geschichte und Theorie der massenhaft verbreiteten Literatur. Bonn: Bouvier, 1964. 292 p.—Modern German popular narratives are envisaged from historical, sociological, commercial, statistical, thematic, structural and anthropological points of view. Excellent example of methodological convergence and mediation, with a huge bibliography.                

"Littérature et sous-littérature." Bulletin du séminaire du littérature générale. #10 (1963). 95 p.                

Littératures marginales. Histoire des littératures. III. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. pp. 1567-1734.—Series of chapters on "pedlars' literature" (P. Brochon); the popular novel, studied from a thematic rather than sociological point of view (J. Tortel); children's literature in French (A. Bay); song; detective novel, French and Anglo-American (T. Narcejac); SF (J. Bergier); and finally the relations of literature with radio and cinema (not with TV). Much information but also many gaps and a lack of precision.                

Lowenthal, Leo. Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1961. xxiv+169 p.  

Messac, Régis. Le Détective-novel et l'influence de la pensée scientifique. Paris: Champion, 1929. 698 p.—Probably the first doctoral dissertation in a paraliterary genre. Remains a monument of comparatist erudition. Interesting views on other non-canonic genres (e.g. Gothic novel, fantastic tale, 19th Century popular adventure story) and their relationships.  

Moles, Abraham. Le Kitsch, I'art du bonheur. Paris: Mame, 1971. 247 p.—A theory of Kitsch based on the alienation in and esthetics of everyday life in industrial society.                

Narcejac, Thomas. Une machine à lire: Le roman policier. Preface by F. Le Lionnais. Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1975. 247 p.—The detective novel as a hybrid of art and (criminological) science. Sketches a theory of enigma and of proof. Discusses the playful aspects, and a typology of forms which is also a brief overview of the best writers in the genre. It is determined by a reading convention.                

Nowak, Emilia. "Literature and Mass Culture: An Attempt to Define Mass Culture through the Structure of Literary Work," Zagadnienia Rodzajòw Literackich, g #2 (17):(1967): 91-97.                

Nutz, Walter. Der Trivialroman, seine Formen und seine Hersteller: Ein Beitrag zur Literatursoziologie. Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1962. 119 p. (2nd edn 1966).—Best brief monograph from the German school of paraliterature studies. Discusses typology (with only 2 pp on SF) and sociology (techniques of production and diffusion, writers' status). Very informative.                

Nye, Russell B. The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Art in America. New York: The Dial Press, 1970. 497 p.—A study of US popular art in 6 parts: popular fiction, popular theater, popular art on newsstands, "cops, spacemen, and cowboys," popular music, and media. Well documented, with a wide-ranging perspective and analytical penetration, but with no attempt at theoretical synthesis. The part on SF is out of date. Useful bibliography.     

Orwell, George. A Collection of Essays. Garden City NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1954. 320 p. (rpt. 1957). —Excellent path-breaking considerations of comic postcards, the crime story, politics and language, and boys' weeklies.                

Ousby, Ian. Bloodhounds of Heaven: The Detective in English Fiction From Godwin to Doyle. London: Harvard University Press, 1976. 194 p.                

Radine, Serge. Quelques aspects du roman policier psychologique. Genève: Editions du Mont Blanc, 1960, 293 p. —Studies on the great British and American detective novels. Some what anecdotical; contains however relevant considerations on the narrative technique and on ideologies particular to the genre.  

Reinert, Claus. Das Unheimliche und die Detektivliteratur. Bonn: Bouvier/Grundmann, 1973. 158 p.—Rigorous academic study with a structuralist approach centered on the notion of the Uncanny. Places the detective story into paraliterature poetics and sociology. Describes its narrative characteristics. More cultural philosophy than systematic poetics.

"Le Roman feuilleton." Europe #542 (June 1974). 276 p.—A special issue on the French "serial novel" (i.e. types of popular narrative in the 19th century and till the 1920's).                

Schenda, Rudolf. Volk ohne Buch: Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der popularen Lasestoffe, 1770-1910. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1970. 608 p.—A wide survey of problems in 19th-Century paraliterature: production of popular books, commerce, readership; forms, themes and genres. Important bibliography.               

Schimidt-Henkel, Gerhardt, ed. Trivialliteratur: Aufsätze. Berlin: Literarisches Colloquium, 1964. 266 p.—Essays by 15 scholars on a number of German paraliterary genres (western, detective novel, patriotic romance, sentimental novel, etc.) Includes a study by Ulf Diederichs, "Zeitgemässes und Unzeitgemässes: Die Literatur der Science Fiction."

Schulte-Sasse, Jochen. Die Kritik an der Trivialliteratur seit der Aufklärung: Studien zur Geschichte des modernen Kitschbegriffs. München: Fink, 1971. 162 p.—Historical study of intellectual opinions on 18-20th Century paraliterature, mainly in Germany, with special stress on the term and notion of Kitsch, its birth and development. (See also his Literarische Wertung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1971. 79 p.)                

Seesslen, Georg, and Bernt Kling. Romantik und Gewalt: Ein Lexikon der Unterhaltungsindustrie. München: Manz, 1973—. 3 vols. —Encyclopedia entries on popular genres in literature, comics, media, etc., with an introductory essay on each genre. Selective, accurate, international in scope, and with a historical dimension. The entries on SF in vol. 1, by Kling, deal both with prose and comics.                

Tourteau, Jacques. D'Arsene Lupin a San Antonio: Le roman policier français de 1900 à 1970. Paris: Mame, 1970. 326 p.                

Waldmann, Günter. Theorie und Didaktik der Trivialliteratur: Modellanalysen, Didaktikdiscussion, literar. Wertung. München: Fink, 1973. 196 p.


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