نبذة مختصرة : In the book Literature and the Social: Bourdieu, Williams and their Successors the author deals with the problem of mediation between the literary text and its social context. He focuses on two important contemporary context‑oriented approaches to literature: the theory of the literary field, developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and cultural materialism, first formulated by Raymond Williams and further elaborated by Alan Sinfield and Jonathan Dollimore. He interprets these two theories as basic, mutually complementary models: the theory of the literary field presupposes the existence of a (semi-) autonomous literary micro‑world, whereas cultural materialism stresses the full integration of the literary text into the social context, the ‘social material process'(Williams). The first, introductory part of the book outlines the problem of the mediation between the literary text and the social context and presents the overall structure of the book. In the second part the author concentrates on Bourdieu's theory of the literary field, his ‘new science of works', and on contemporary postbourdieusian approaches (those of Alain Viala, Anna Boschetti, Jacques Dubois, Gisèle Sapiro, Pascale Casanova, Bernard Lahire, Jérôme Meizoz and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie) which employ, develop, and modify the field theory, using them to shape his critique of this theory as a model of mediation. The introductory analysis of main concepts of Bourdieu's theory of action and theory of the literary field (social field, literary field, habitus, cultural capital) is based on his seminal book The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1992) as well as several important articles on fields of cultural production and literary field and other works by Bourdieu. The chapters which follow are dedicated to questions of autonomy and principles of Bourdieu's ‘new science of works', with an excursus on his critique of the aesthetic, belonging in part to another line of his study (the theory of cultural consumption and reproduction). The next, most extensive section considers ‘postbourdieusian'approaches – the ways in which the theory of the literary field has developed in contemporary francophone literary sociology. The first important article by Bourdieu on the theory of fields of cultural production was published as early as 1966 and a series of other works followed; thus his theory had considerable impact even before the publication of Rules of Art 25 years later. The author therefore examines several important works inspired by the field theory before the publication of Bourdieu's book, especially those by Jacques Dubois (L'institution de la littérature. Introduction à une sociologie, 1978), Anna Boschetti (Sartre et les Temps modernes. Une entreprise intellectuelle, 1985) and Alain Viala (Naissance de l'écrivain. Sociologie de la littérature à l'âge classique, 1985). The subsequent chapters are dedicated to four prominent contemporary French literary sociologists who in a critical manner further develop Bourdieu's initial project. The first and foremost of these is Gisèle Sapiro, who employs the theory in her analyses of several periods of development in the French literary field, using statistical methods and focusing on the problem of writer's social responsibility (esp. in La guerre des écrivains 1940–1953, 1999; La responsabilité de l'écrivain. Littérature, droit et morale en France (XIXe–XXIe siècle), 2011; and Les écrivains et la politique en France. De l'affaire Dreyfus à la guerre d'Algérie, 2018). Pascale Casanova has developed her own approach to ‘world literature', strongly inspired by Bourdieu's concepts of literary field and cultural capital (La République mondiale des Lettres, 1999). Her works also point to some weak aspects and biases of the field theory. Both Sapiro and Casanova adopt the main premises of Bourdieu's theory without substantially criticising or revising it. In contrast, Bernard Lahire has developed the most detailed an
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