PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO LITERATURE, SOCIOLOGY OF LITERATURE, SOCIOLOGICAL LITERARY RESEARCH: QUESTIONS OF METHODS IN PROGRESS Uve Christian Fischer Sociology

and Literature. It is neither a new nor a recent discovery that within the framework of the sciences in general, sociology has acquired and is still acquiring the status of a central science, such as theology, philosophy, and economics have had during other periods1'. There are several reasons that can justify such a key position, according to the particular science or perspective with which a topic is approached. All of these, however, may be reduced to the simple statement, that the preference for a sociological approach is dictated by the increasing interest which we take in the spiritual and material conditions that have produced the present special social situation. Literature has not been exempted from this trend, though one has to register a rather belated entrance for it Into the field of sociology as the new central science and organizing force. This is due to various reasons, the main one being the firm establishment of the historical and critical approach to literature in the course of the nineteenth century. Predominance of sociology in literary research today does not signify, however, that any solution to the primary dichotomy between literary and social values has been found. Theoretical discussion on this problem has been going on for a considerable time without, however, achieving any finally satisfactory conclusion2'. It is not the intention of this article to engage in aesthetic discussion. The purpose is rather to deal with certain types of literary theories, which taken as a whole, seem to indicate the direction of the sociological treatment of literature. Literature is certainly something socially defined, though a literary work can only in part be considered as sociologically revealing. One result of the perusal of sociological literature is the impression one gets of the rather narrow basis for the new central science to develop theoretically. Another is the widening of the methodological margin, and that to an extent whereas in recent developments no distinctions can be made any longer between method and theory. Discussion of Some Literary Theories. Satisfactory literary theory seems to proceed on its own lines, as well as in interaction with philosophy, literary criticism, and literary history. Thus the phenomenological approach to literature, that followed the ideas of Edmund Husserl, gave a new direction to criticism and theory following the positivist factfinding on biography, sources, and influences. The publication of a phenomenological presentation of literature by Roman Ingarden, a pupil of Husserl3', is the time limit, to which we can date back this new endeavour in theory. Ingarden agrees with the sociological approach to literature in that no mention is made of aesthetic value. There is a complex background to this. Here it will be sufficient to say that Ingarden stresses the autonomous character of any literary work without having any regard to the author's personal opinions and life, which he thinks of as a distracting item, and therefore not primarily interest-

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ing in a theoretical discussion41. Ingarden's ontological research probes mainly into the relationship between factual reality and reality as presented in the novel. He succeeds in a phenomenological description of the basic structure, i.e. the structure underlying literary works of art in general, the result being one of the few philosophically based literary theories. It does not contribute to our discussion to mention the positions taken by Jean Paul Sartre and Georg Lukacs, since this pair should be considered mainly under the aspect of the ideologies that they are representing. Where Ingarden leaves the problem of value aside as something inaccessible to proof, Rene Wellek certainly does not. Better perhaps than in his and Austin Warren's "Theory of Literature"5', his position is shown in a more recent book6'. What we find there, is a strong Kantian belief in the necessity to ascertain aesthetic categories and, within the realm of literature, a whole hierarchy of values. Wellek's main point can be gathered from his arguments against relativism as it results, for example, from the historicism of Erich Auerbach7'. He propounds a "concept of adequacy of interpretation (that) leads clearly to the concept of the correctness of judgment"8', and asks for a "systematic body of knowledge, an inquiry into structures, norms, and functions which contain, and are, values"9'. Wellek's main concern, however, is how imperative aesthetic imperatives should be. He comes to the conclusion that in literary theory absolutism is almost as bad as relativism and finally identifies his position with the one taken by Ernst Troeltsch10', whom he quotes as saying: "The absolute is in the relative, though not finally and fully in it."11' A sociological theory of literature appears to be as directly opposed to the phenomenological approach as a theory based on values. An attempt to bridge this gulf and to employ phenomenology in the service of sociology has recently been made by Hans Norbert Fuegen121. His book is a historical and critical account of the directions taken by sociology as a science of literature. It is a deep probing analysis into the sociological ideas which provide the framework for a theoretical insight into the literary object. He also analyses the social relationship between author and reader13'. Reverting to Ingarden, he calls Ms conclusions important but preliminary, because concerned with the basic structures of literary works and not extending to literature as a social phenomenon14'. Fuegen considers a piece of literature as an artefact, which is reason enough for him to broaden Ingarden's ontological analysis towards an empirical-sociological treatment. Fuegen's central point is what he calls "das soziale Grundverhaeltnis", or basic social rapport. By this he means that literature is basically not a literary, but a social phenomenon. He claims that through the inherent logic of its subject matter every work of literature is basically a social document. The public is confronted by this social fact, seeing the writer not any more as an outstanding person, but simply as a producer of literary works, and thus as a type. The publiccompleting the basic rapport of the social phenomenon 'literature'is usually effectively influenced by the subject matter of the work of literature. It is important in Fuegen's theory that the subject matter of a work of art is an operative agent, on the one hand levelling the individual author to the status of a type, on the other hand actively influencing the ideas and behaviour of the reading public15'. The theories or theoretical approaches to literature that have been presented
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above, though offering distinctive characteristics, have nevertheless one common feature, that is to say their reaction to the concept of value. Whether pleading from a categorical point of view, as R. Wellek does, or employing a descriptive method, the participants in this continuing discussion base themselves on an acceptance or negation of the aesthetic evaluation of a literary work. The aims and methods of sociological literary research as they are exemplified in an article written recently by a Swedish scholar, cannot be easily compared with those characterized above16'. Rosengren points out that a sociology of literature and sociological literary research have to be considered as fields that are distinct one from the other, the first being defined by general social criteria, while the latter is empirical and quantitative. Objective measurement, as explained below, is the guiding principle for a future theory as envisaged by Rosengren. He is not dealing directly with the individual work of art, but rather with the attitudes of the reading public which he considers an objective value measure of literature. He proceeds to explain how terms such as 'group', 'norm', 'institution', 'role', 'attitude', and others could be useful in order to establish what he calls the 'sociological frame of reference' ('sociologisk referensram')17'. Rosengren thinks of these terms as 'quantitative variables', that is to say as working in an operational way. They therefore take their meaning only from possible statistical measurements18'. Having discussed the role of these variables Rosengren proceeds to a number of subtheories, which eventually could form the material for an objective sociological theory of literary research. The question remains whether the terms which are used as quantitative variables will be sufficient in number and quality to validate the subtheories mentioned above. It seems to me, however, that the weakness of Rosengren's theory, as it stands, is that there are probably only a. very limited number of possible sociological variables. The approach to literature, as a social system defined by Rosengren is certainly more limited than that of Fuegen, who sees literature as a social phenomenon connected with Being. The theories or theoretical approaches to literature of Ingarden, Wellek, and Fuegen may be taken as representative of phases of a developing theoretical process. With Rosengren we reach what appears to be an end of this process, but since we now enter an area of pure empirics, what may be a new beginning. His sociological method relies on information theory and communication research, such as have been mainly developed during the fifties in the United States19'. The Problem Stated. The problem involved in these new approaches to literature is not, as one might think, one of mistaking the sociological significance of a work of literature for its artistic value20'. Neither is it very important whether a sociological inquiry into literature is carried out hi its own right, or should be considered as "an explanatory footnote to an aesthetic judgment21', or even as an auxiliary science22'. The emerging question is: If we accept T. S. Eliot's thesis that "every generation must provide its own criticism"23'which implicitly means a new approach to literary theory and to the historical questions of literature as wellcan we say that the type of theory proposed by Rosengren is representative for this generation? Such could be the guiding question that clarifies the present literary situation. It is, of course, not easy to predict how sociology, as the central science of our
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time, will organize itself with regard to literature. One has to keep in mind, however, the existence of Rosengren's method. There is at least the strong impression, that we are not confronted by two (or for that matter even more) approaches that complement each other. Apparently more work needs to be done by research groups aiming at very special questions with the help of these new quantitative methods. At this stage it appears that groups like this should concentrate on accumulating data without attempting to formulate any specific theories. When sufficient data has been gathered it will be seen whether Rosengren's subtheories are feasible or not. Having examined Rsengren's method from an empirical point of view, let us now see him in a phenomenological context. This will be necessary in order to characterize his position more clearly than just by the simple statement that his method is one of accumulating quantitative values and is empirical in the extreme, or, as he claims, 'objective'. We come here into a sphere where we may adapt Edmund Husserl's division between the 'sphere of experience' and the 'realm of essence'24'. Husserl understands the empirical side as one which has no need of a theoretical foundation, and therefore may be described as basically 'dogmatic'. The 'dogmatic sciences' "find the data of knowledge there where they actually face you whatever difficulties epistemological reflection may subsequently raise concerning the possibility of such data being there"25'. Here we have some criteria that can help us to understand an approach like Rosengren's. Phenomenologically speaking, it is a dogmatic one, and has to be taken into consideration as such, i.e. as informative, but not critically transferable to the "realm of essence", and therefore meaningless. It thus appears that the use of Rosengren's quantitative variables that constitutewith regard to literaturea sociological frame of reference, will not give one the 'original right', as Husserl calls it, to the data obtained. But then again, as has been found with Fuegen, the sociology of literature, taken as a whole, need not be considered a dogmatic science. Nothing has been decided yet in this developing theoretical process, nor will be within the foreseeable future. NOTES
1) cf. A. Mauser's "Philosophic der Kunstgeschichte", Munchen 1958, p. 17. 2) Apart from the theories that are dealt with in this article, cf. for example: M. Bense "Theorie der Texte", Hamburg 1963. H. D. Duncan "Language and Literature in Society", Chicago 1953. R. Escarpit "Sociologie de la Litterature", Paris 1958. First enlarged ed. in German transl. "Das Buch und der Leser", Koln/Opladen 1961. G. Lukacs "Schriften zur Literatursoziologie", Newied 1961. J. Klein "Aesthetische und soziologische Literaturbetrachtung", Archiv. f. Sozialgeschichte Bd. I, 1961, Hannover 1961. L. Kofler "Zur Theorie der Modernen Literatur Der Avantgardismus in Sociologischer Sicht", Neuwied 1962. 3) R. Ingarden "Das literarische Kunstwerk", Halle 1931. 4) Ibid., p. 18. 5) First edition New York 1949. 6) R. Wellek "Concepts of Criticism", New Haven and London 1963. 7) Ibid., pp. 11-19. 8) Ibid., p. 17. 9) Ibil., p. 52. 10) in: "Der Historismus und seine Probleme", Tuebingen 1922. 11) Loc. cit, p. 20.
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12) H. N. Fuegen "Die Hauptrichtungen der Literatursoziologie und ihre Methoden", Bonn 1964. 13) Ibid., pp. 13-20 and 109-19. 14) Ibid., p. 15. 15) Ibid., pp. 16-9. 16) Karl Erik Rosengren "LitteratursociologiSociologisk Litteraturforskning". in: "Litteraturvetenskap. Nya Mai och Metoder". (authors: P. Hallberg, G. Hansson, G. Hermeren, K. E. Rosengren, J. Thavenius), Stockholm 1966, pp. 108-23. 17) Ibid., p. 109. 18) Ibid., p. 114. 19) Ibid., p. 108. cf. also loc. cit. K. E. Rosengren "Innehallsanalys", pp. 76-7. 20) cf. Hauser, loc. cit., p. 10. 21) cf. T. S. Shipley "Dictionary of World Literature", New York 1953 (rev. ed.), p. 256. 22) R. Escarpit "Das Buch und der Leser", cf. loc. cit., p. 17. 23) T. S. Eliot 'The Frontiers of Criticism", in: "On Poetry and Poets", London 1957, p. 104. 24) E. Husserl "Ideas", English transl. by W. R. Boyce Gibson, 1st ed. London 1931, p. 95. 25) Ibid., p. 96.

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