Aims

Introduction to the field of study currently known as sociology of literature. In this context, students are lead to consider literature as a social practice, which brings them to ask questions on the meaning, operation, and effect of this cultural practice on the social level.

Main themes

The main themes are:
- literature as object
- literature as value
- literature as practice
Literature as object
A study, stemming from the sociology of books, which takes into account the many forms of mediation (technological, semiological, aesthetic, institutional…) through which we gain access to (para)literary texts.
Literature as value
A study concerning the key question, "what makes a text literature?", which brings to light the diversity of parameters that come into play when answering this question.
Literature as practice
A study, dealing with literature particularly from the standpoint of its consumption, which proposes a dual broadening of perspective, literature being considered both as a cultural and a social practice.

Content and teaching methods

From a sociological perspective, it is necessary to base research on a few key concepts and appropriate tools for analysis allowing us to study literature as a cultural and social practice. Among these concepts and tools, one should distinguish between cultural practice and production, the market of symbolic goods, economic capital, symbolic capital, literary value, habitus, literary fields and institutions, literature, and paraliterature.
The seminar is viewed as an active and collective initiation to research; the concepts and tools for analysis are thus experimented with in an inductive manner (alternation between research analysis in a large group and in sub-groups).
The actual progression of the seminar is made concrete in the building of a seminar dossier to be completed in the course of the meetings.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Assessment is based on student participation in sub-groups and on a personal paper developing a question dealt with in the seminar.

Other credits in programs