Ethics and aesthetics: the problems of orthodox marxist sociology of literature

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a critical assessment of orthodox Marxist accounts of the ways in which sociological factors influence or determine literary texts, with particular attention to a) the origin of these problems in the work of Marx, Engels, and Lenin; b) the way in which they are manifested in the later works of Georg Lukacs, crystallizing in his conception of literary realism; c) Lucien Goldmann's unsuccessful attempt to remedy them through an integration of an adulterated version of Marxism with an unsatisfactory kind of structuralism; and d) the need for some such synthesis of the Marxist and structuralist perspectives in order to supplement Marxism's insufficiently sociological approach to the aesthetic dimension of literature with the sophisticated sociological insights of some of the more recent semio-structuralist theorists. ii