https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975520922469
Cultural Sociology
2020, Vol. 14(2) 180­–200
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1749975520922469
journals.sagepub.com/home/cus
Theorizing the Social Through
Literary Fiction: For a New
Sociology of Literature
Jan Váňa 
Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Abstract
When analyzing literary fiction, most cultural sociologists still accept the well-established
boundaries between the literary and the sociological, thus leaving literature stripped of its
aesthetic qualities. Instead, I propose a new approach that focuses on the process of meaningmaking
as it occurs within the interaction between the reader and the novel in a given sociohistorical
setting. This allows analysts to capture those aspects of understanding social experience
which are usually ‘lost in translation’ between fictional and sociological genres. My major claims
are that, first, when referring to social experience, both sociological and literary texts employ
aesthetic devices to mediate understanding for the reader. Second, within the literary genre, the
understanding of social experience relies much more on the emotional engagement of the reader
through a reading process facilitated by these aesthetic devices. Third, to benefit methodologically
and epistemologically from the lyrical understanding of social experience mediated by literature,
cultural sociologists must be particularly sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings
mediated by the aesthetic. The methodological advantage gained is the analysis of deeper cultural
meanings grounded in, yet also going beyond, an emotionally and existentially experienced social
reality, which is intersubjectively shared and filtered by various groups of readers and cultural
intermediaries. The epistemological advantage gained by overcoming the assumed inferiority of
literature is that cultural sociological research unlocks a whole new area for understanding the
meanings of social life, especially its non-discursive dimensions. The research model I propose for
a new sociology of literature adopts the landscape of meaning concept developed by Isaac Reed in
combination with the aesthetic structuralism of Czech linguist Jan Mukařovský. This model will be
demonstrated through an interpretive analysis of the Czech novel Sestra (published in English as
City Sister Silver) by Jáchym Topol.
Keywords
Czech literature, landscape of meaning, literary, literature, lyrical sociology, post-communism,
sociology of literature, structural aesthetics
Corresponding author:
Jan Váňa, Masaryk University, Joštova 218/10, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic.
Email: jan.vana@mail.muni.cz
922469CUS0010.1177/1749975520922469Cultural SociologyVáňa
research-article2020
Article
Váňa	 181
The Question of Literature as Sociology
And there I stood in the street, it was freedom, half past six, weather roughly March. Clouds
above, asphalt below, people with shopping bags walking the street, children and dogs in tow,
it was freedom and time out of joint was going mad. I let it drag me in, it was a different dance
than . . . the dance of the rose, different than with the truncheons, there was no end to it, it
seemed endless. Human time had accelerated, I was disguised as a young man with a tigerstripe
tie, files under my arm, walking to an appointment with my associates . . . We knew that
Slovaks were fast Moravians, Moravians were a few bricks shy of a load, Czechs thought
around the corner, Praguers were stuck-up pigs, and all of us were on the same map. Micka and
I had been born with asphalt between our fingers . . . . (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 37–38)
The Chicago River, its waters stained by industry, flows back upon itself, branching to divide
the city into the South Side, the North Side, and ‘the great West Side.’ In the river’s southward
bend lies the Loop, its skyline looming towards Lake Michigan. The Loop is the heart of
Chicago, the knot in the steel arteries of elevated structure which pump in a ceaseless stream
the three millions of population of the city into and out of its central business district. The
canyon-like streets of the Loop rumble with the traffic of commerce. On its sidewalks throng
people of every nation, pushing unseeingly past one another, into and out of office buildings,
shops, theaters, hotels, and ultimately back to the north, south, and west ‘sides’ from which
they came. For miles over what once was prairie now sprawls in endless blocks the city.
(Zorbaugh, 1929: 1)
These two excerpts provide insight into the aesthetic and emotional aspects of the social
landscape of two cities, post-communist Prague in 1989 and early 20th-century Chicago,
by means of emotional engagement with the text. The first comes from a novel, the second
from a sociological book. In his influential article, ‘Against Narrative: A Preface to Lyrical
Sociology’, Andrew Abbott (2007) uses Zorbaugh’s text to show that sociology can, and
does, embrace literary rhetorical devices for mediating the experience of a social world to
readers. Abbott stresses the lyrical aspects of Zorbaugh’s passage in contrast to another
sociological text, which he considers non-lyrical. I also wish to use Zorbaugh’s lyrical and
sociological piece to make a comparison, only in my case it is with a piece by Czech writer
Jáchym Topol, which is lyrical but not explicitly sociological.
Abbott (2007: 68) starts with the suggestion that Zorbaugh’s passage aims ‘to evoke
in the reader a certain frame of mind . . . a sense of excitement and intensity’. By means
of his language ‘Zorbaugh invokes not only simple metaphors like the “stained” river
and the “looming” and “canyon-like” Loop, but also the Homeric simile of the el tracks
as the blood system through which circulates the diurnal pulse of city life’(Abbott, 2007:
68). Also in the passage by Topol, we can see how ‘excitement and intensity’ are generated
by metaphorical language and aesthetic devices. ‘It is because [they find] the city
fascinating and overwhelming that Zorbaugh [and Topol] can wax poetic’(Abbott, 2007:
68). It is because they are emotionally engaged and emotionally engaging. Far from
being abstract sociological theories, both passages are ‘about a thing’(Abbott, 2007: 68),
that is, about real, tangible objects.
Zorbaugh, providing a macro-sociological bird’s-eye view, ‘writes of the city itself—
its geography, its people, its places’ (Abbott, 2007: 68), while Topol, who depicts situations
and characters in a more microsociological way, talks about the concrete experience
182	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
of the fuss and fervor of new freedom by sketching ‘people with shopping bags’ and a
‘man with a tiger-stripe tie’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 37). The effect of concreteness is further
facilitated by the pictorial, snapshot-like character of both passages. Zorbaugh’s
portrayal develops like brush strokes, step by step painting a more cogent image of social
landscape with every new line adding detail, context, and color to what has already been
painted. Similarly, Topol piles up layers of meaning, drawing us deeper into the presented
situation, into a ‘state of being, a moment’ (Abbott, 2007: 69). While one is a
sociologist by profession and writer by heart, and the other is a sociologist by heart and
writer by profession, both Zorbaugh and Topol look ‘at a social situation, [feel] its overpowering
excitement and its deeply affecting human complexity, and then [write] a book
trying to awaken those feelings in the minds—and even more the hearts—of [their] readers’
(Abbott, 2007: 70).
A lyrical account of social experience is anchored in the ‘emotional engagement’
(Abbott, 2007: 92), which presents the text to the reader as something familiar, endowed
with a deeply subjective quality. This emotion, Abbott (2007: 94) writes, ‘is rooted completely
in the here and now about which the author is writing’. Instead of determinate
social facts, the attention of the reader is shifted to the ‘recreation of an experience of
social discovery’(Abbott, 2007: 70) of these facts—experiencing social life in its becoming.
Yet, the lyrical can also express more general and stable aspects of social life.
Fictional writing embraces aesthetic devices like metaphors and allegories, which can
refer beyond concrete experience and are thus able to mediate a deeper understanding of
the social landscape where this experience occurs.
My argument in this article is based on three claims. First, when referring to social
experience, both sociological and literary texts employ aesthetic devices to mediate
understanding for the reader. Second, within the literary genre, the understanding of
social experience relies much more on the emotional engagement of the reader through
a reading process facilitated by these aesthetic devices. Third, to benefit from the lyrical
understanding of social experience mediated by literature, cultural sociologists must be
particularly sensitive to the subtlety and ambiguity of meanings mediated by the aesthetic.
The benefit is twofold. Methodologically, it allows for an analysis of the deeper
cultural meanings grounded in, yet also going beyond, an emotionally and existentially
experienced social reality, which is intersubjectively shared and filtered by various
groups of readers and cultural intermediaries. In terms of epistemology, sociologists
sometimes look at literature with jealousy, acknowledging that it can testify to social
phenomena beyond the grasp of social sciences. For example, Harrington (2002: 55)
claims that a literary work can ‘communicate thoughts [about social life] that scientific
discourse could not’. Rita Felski (2008: 88) speaks about the ‘social phenomenology’
mediated by novels, which cannot be provided by sociology. According to Ron Eyerman
(2006: 27), even the most cited sociologist of literature, Pierre Bourdieu (1996), admits
‘that some aspects of social structures are better grasped through novels than the more
direct methods of scientific research’. I argue that only by overcoming the often-assumed
inferiority of literature in sociological research, can cultural sociologists realize its full
potential in understanding the meanings of social life.
My proposal for a new sociology of literature1
adopts the landscape of meaning concept
developed by Isaac Reed (2011) in combination with the aesthetic structuralism of
Váňa	 183
Czech linguist Jan Mukařovský (1971, 1978). I demonstrate this approach through an
analysis of the Czech novel City Sister Silver (hereafter Sister in italics),2
by Jáchym
Topol (2000 [1994]). I chose Sister for two main reasons: (1) Sister mediates a deeper
understanding of social experience in a newly emerging Czechoslovak republic from
1989 onwards, and (2) this deeper understanding is possible through the reader’s (and the
author’s) emotional engagement with the text which is facilitated by the aesthetic devices
of the text. I pinpoint key aspects of the deeper understanding of social experience mediated
by Sister, which include time perception, use of language, and the alternation
between the immersion and alienation of the reader. These aspects capture the transformation
of the meaningful landscape characterized by both continuity and discontinuity
between the Czechoslovak regimes before and after 1989.
Between Sociology and Literature
The idea that the study of novels is beneficial for sociology is as old as the discipline
itself. In fact, when Auguste Comte coined the term ‘sociology’, the object and methods
of the emerging social sciences largely overlapped with the ways of literary fiction. It
was due to institutional separation that they split into incompatible fields of intellectual
inquiry, typically portrayed as the ‘confrontation of cold rationality and the culture of the
feelings’ (Lepenies, 1988: 1). Yet, along with the ongoing de-positivization of sociology
in the last third of the 20th century, marked by such movements as the linguistic turn,
poststructuralism, and the cultural turn, cultural sociologists have been treating this division
rather suspiciously (Alexander, 2015).
Some scholars tried to bridge the historically established boundaries retrospectively,
focusing on literary texts which resemble sociological ones (e.g. Berger, 1977;
Brinkmann, 2009; Erasga, 2010; Harrington, 2004; Hoggart, 1966; Smith, 2004). In
1963, Lewis Coser wrote in the introduction to his collection of classical fiction stories
for sociologists that fiction ‘provides the social scientist with a wealth of sociologically
relevant material, with manifold clues and points of departure for sociological theory and
research’ (Coser, 1963: 3). Despite, or perhaps because of, their non-scientific language,
literary texts often provide insightful analyses of society. Some writers, for example
Michel Houellebecq, might even be called ‘literary sociologist[s]’ (Petersen and
Jacobsen, 2012: 100) or ‘lyrical sociologist[s]’ (Brinkmann, 2009: 1379) for their ability
to communicate social experience to the reader. However, labeling a writer a ‘sociologist’
was never entirely serious. Most scholars still cling to the long-established idea that
without an adequate sociological interpretation, literary fiction lacks the conceptual and
systematic clarity to be used scientifically (Longo, 2016: 145).
Another set of studies (Atkinson, 1990; Becker, 2007; Beer, 2016; Brown, 1977;
Lepenies, 1988; Nisbet, 1962, 1977; Smith, 2008) crosses the historical boundaries
between sociology and fiction by emphasizing the literary qualities of sociological
works. Demonstrating that sociologists often employ similar rhetorical devices to those
of writers and poets, these studies suggest that the plausibility of scientific texts is to a
considerable degree co-created by their emotional and aesthetic aspects. Perhaps the
most cogent example is an ethnography by Clifford Geertz (1973). According to Philip
Smith (2008: 177; cf. Alexander et al., 2011), the power of Geertz’s iconic study on the
184	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
Balinese cockfight stems from its position between the sphere of social science and literature.
Abandoning the false chimera of ‘conventional positivist ethnography’, Geertz
‘takes advantage of this more literary forum to sail close to the winds of aestheticism,
relativism, and subjectivism’ (Smith, 2008: 178; see also ‘blurred genres’ in Geertz,
1980). However, it is not a case whereby the author could simply ‘persuade the reader’
by means of aesthetic devices and rhetorical figures (Atkinson, 1990: 62). Rather, the
lyricalness is closely related to experiencing the investigated social phenomena. Lyrical
language helps Geertz to make sense of the disorderly flow of impressions and sensations
in order to capture the ‘messy’ social experience as genuinely as he can.
Consequently, the researcher’s ability to mediate their own experience to the reader by
means of the lyrical can facilitate a ‘reality-effect’ (Greenblatt, 1997: 20).
However, according to Abbott (2007), lyrical sociology is not the exclusive domain of
ethnographers and anthropologists. Besides mentioning Bronisław Malinowski and
Michael Bell, Abbott alludes to Chicago School scholars like Robert Park or even
Nicholas Christakis, whose work is considered lyrical despite its predominantly quantitative
character. Lyricism, then, is not bound to a specific subfield, genre, or method. It
is rather a particular approach characterized by Abbott (2007: 92) as having an ‘emotional
engagement’ or ‘emotional stance’ towards the topics of inquiry.
In this regard, John P. Ward (1986: 328–331) describes a poetic ‘realignment’ that
sociology has taken in the 1970s and 1980s by adopting a ‘new phenomenological
reflexivity’. Following authors like Goffman, Giddens, Garfinkel, and Schütz, sociologists
‘have become less inhibited in their use of language, no longer concerned only to
be purely objective or scientific’ (Ward, 1986: 332–333). Often, a lyrical or ‘metaphoremploying’
(Watson, 2016: 432) style of writing is connected to sociological imagination.
Richard Swedberg (2014: 20–25) conceives of metaphors and analogies as crucial
components of sociological ‘theorizing’. Such a ‘poetic sociological imagination . . .
shifts from science to poetry, and from empirical evidence to artistic impressions and
creative expressions’ (Jacobsen and Marshman, 2008: 800). The aesthetic aspects, then,
do not only make a sociological text more persuasive, compelling, or memorable; they
also constitute the meaning of what is communicated between the author, the text, and
the reader.
On Epistemology: How Literature Theorizes Society
Both sociology and literature can be emotionally engaging in their accounts and both
employ aesthetic devices in their texts. However, they embrace different ‘criteria and
modes of communication’(Nisbet, 1962: 73) through which they mediate understanding of
phenomena.3
To fulfill these criteria of communication, sociologists often strive to translate
or convert ‘literary data into sociological discourse’ (Longo, 2016: 142; see also
Alworth, 2014: 257; Harrington, 2002: 52). This conversion is typically accomplished in
two ways. In the first approach, literature is treated as a black box and the analytic focus is
narrowed to its social dimensions—either the social context of its production (Becker,
1982; Bourdieu, 1996; further see Serrão, 2017: 2–3) or reception (e.g. Griswold, 1987;
Radway, 1984; most recently Olave Thumala, 2018). This is the case with a recent special
issue of Cultural Sociology (Franssen and Kuipers, 2015), where the sociology of literature
Váňa	 185
is reduced to (Bourdieusian4
) studies of literary production (see also Váňa, 2020). In the
second approach, investigators look inside the novels, yet treat them as resources inferior
to sociological frameworks. Here, literature is valued as a source of sociological imagination
(Beer, 2016; Edling and Rydgren, 2010; Misztal, 2016), a tool for teaching sociology
(Carlin, 2010; Coser, 1963; Hegtvedt, 1991), or as a support for sociological concepts and
explanations (Boltanski, 2014; Singer, 2011; Smith, 2004). In these cases, sociological
interest in novels does not go beyond their utility.
There are, however, some sociologists who found that full-fledged sociological understanding
can be mediated by the novels themselves. Authors such as Balzac (Pasco,
2016), Robert Musil (Harrington, 2002), August Strindberg (Swedberg, 2016), or Italo
Calvino (Becker, 2007) are recognized as literary sociologists. In this regard, Harrington
(2002: 51) claims that ‘literary and scientific-sociological accounts of social reality differ
only in the mode of linguistically communicating knowledge, not in the claim to
knowledge itself’.
To understand the similarities between sociology and literature, we can utilize the
landscape of meaning concept developed by Isaac Reed (2011: 89–121). Grounded
within a meaning-centered interpretive epistemology, the main purpose of a landscape of
meaning is to understand how social action is navigated through cultural meanings and
how social actors experience and make sense of these meanings. The cultural sociologist,
who becomes a metaphorical painter, utilizes a distinct ‘paint’ and ‘painting style’ to
reconstruct a certain constellation of meanings as a metaphorical landscape. The advantage
of Reed’s metaphor is that it allows the researcher to observe the landscape from a
distance, which opens up space to infer more general patterns of how meaning is shaped
while at the same time taking account of ‘the variety of ways in which meaning and
processes of communication provide the basis for, and give form to . . . [the] subjectivities
and strategies’ (Reed, 2011: 110) of those who inhabit the landscape.
A similar idea was put forward by Robert Nisbet (1962, 1977). Yet, his conception is
broader than Reed’s as it includes both social scientists and artists, ‘driven by the desire
to understand, to interpret, and to communicate their understanding to the rest of the
world’ (Nisbet, 1962: 69). Nisbet’s ‘social landscape’ (1977: 43) is a way of communicating
social phenomena filtered through the specific ‘perceptions, consciousness, and
style’ of the author by means of creative imagination. In accordance with Reed, Nisbet
defines landscape as a result of theory and evidence, but he describes the process of theorizing
as something not exclusively scientific. The word theory, in its original sense,
stands for contemplation and is closely allied with imagination, that is, ‘internalizing the
outer world to an image’ through the ‘detachment’ of the author (Nisbet, 1962: 69).
Theorizing is an ability to delineate ‘[b]ackground, detail, and characterization’ of a
particular social phenomenon and transform it ‘into something that is iconic in its grasp
of an entire social order’ (Nisbet, 1962: 72).
For Reed (2011: 20), theories are abstract meaning-systems imaginatively mobilized
together with a single goal of achieving a ‘deeper and more general’ (Reed, 2011: 20)
understanding of social meaning. Reed (2011: 167–168) discusses theory in a broader
sense, as primarily drawing on ‘[c]uriosity and the will to understand’, fueled by an
investigator’s ‘sensitivities to idiosyncratic meanings, and not just . . . her logical brilliance’.
The ‘hermeneut’, the human ‘agent of understanding’, applies theory to bring
186	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
‘comprehension of other signification systems, other social formations’ (Reed, 2011:
168). Writing a novel, then, is a theoretical work in a broader sense, which conjoins bits
of social experience documented by the author into a complex web of meanings transcending
these individual bits and creating a sense of a complete whole of social life. We
can find theories as understood by Nisbet and Reed in the novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
and Goethe as much as in the writings of Marx, Weber, or Geertz.5
For example, Howard Becker (2007: 241) observes how Jane Austen in Pride and
Prejudice accumulated countless detailed descriptions to construct a compelling social
analysis of the ‘marriage customs of a particular group of early-nineteenth-century
English country gentry’. Austen’s theoretical skill allows her to ‘spiral out through the
layers of meaning that construe human experience’(Reed, 2011: 89) of marriage customs
vis-à-vis a particular socio-historical background. Constantly moving between abstract
and concrete, fictitious and real, evidence and imagination, Austen can reconstruct the
respective landscape of meaning. The word re-construction is important, as it suggests
that the landscape of meaning is not a mere epistemological tool (a construction). There
is a ‘fundamental connection’ (Reed, 2011: 162) between the textual reconstruction in a
novel, or a sociological text, with concrete socio-historical reality, which the author
strives to understand. The major task for a novelist, as well as a sociologist or an anthropologist,
is to employ theory to reconstruct the landscape of meaning in order for the
reader to recognize ‘that it conforms to reality’ (Atkinson, 1990: 63).
On Methodology: Understanding the Social through the
Aesthetic
Literary fiction employs theorizing in a broader sense to tackle real-world evidence and
transform it into a new meaningful whole—a landscape of meaning. Yet, not all novels
succeed in mediating a meaningful landscape. Sociologists, who recognize sociological
quality in novels, often select novels based on ‘their authors’particular ability to observe
and interpret social phenomena sharply, and using a refined vocabulary’(Kuzmics, 2015:
29–30). For example, Becker (2007: 271–283) chooses a novel by Italo Calvino as it
connects ‘evocative, even erotic’ language, metaphors, and images evoking ‘complex
thoughts and feelings’with elaborate study in urban sociology. Similarly, Alworth (2014:
236) picks Herman Melville’s White-Jacket because ‘the ebullient voice of the narrator’,
‘the striking imagery’ and ‘the embellished descriptions of character’ deploy the novel
‘toward the production of sociological knowledge’. Harrington (2002: 57) values The
Man Without Qualities for Robert Musil’s ability to ‘reflect his experience’ of the
‘Zeitgeist in a unique prose of probing and equivocal complexity’. I argue that these
criteria can be encompassed by Reed’s (2011: 113) concept of maximal interpretation.
The novelist produces deeper understanding6
by connecting historically located experience
with theory in a broader sense, and this is mediated to the reader through the landscape
of meaning (cf. ‘deep intersubjectivity’ in Felski, 2008: 91).
Readers can access implicit sources of deeper meaning by engaging emotionally
with the novel (see ‘Landscape of meaning, implicit’ in Figure 1). The landscape of
meaning, which has been codified through the author’s imaginative practice, is activated
in the reading process and perpetually reconstructed as long as the novel and the
Váňa	 187
reader maintain the interaction. The spaces of literary production and reception shape
the landscape of meaning in the background, as they influence the writing as well as
the reading of the novel.
A cultural sociologist who wants to access the deeper understanding mediated by the
novel in a more extensive way must ‘explicitate’7
(as to make explicit; see Serrão, 2017:
4) what happens within the author-novel-reader communication vis-à-vis socio-historical
background—particularly with respect to the novel’s production and reception.
An effective way to accomplish such an explicitation was developed in the mid-20th
century by linguist and literary theorist Jan Mukařovský (1971, 1978), a member of the
Prague Linguistic Circle.8
The aesthetic structuralism employed by Mukařovský can be
understood as a method of deep interpretation based on the aesthetic aspects of a literary
text. The aesthetic aspects considered by the interpreter include: style, metaphorical language,
melody and rhythm, the order of and relation between textual elements on various
levels such as words, sentences, and paragraphs. These textual elements are subsequently
investigated in relation to the social space of production and reception as it develops in
time. Finally, the interpreter examines how factors internal and external to the text participate
in forming the overall meaning.
For example, in the classic Czech novel The Grandma (Babička) by Božena Němcová
(1924 [1855]), Mukařovský (1982 [1925]) notices something similar to what Becker
(2007: 238–251) finds in Pride and Prejudice: an accumulation of details forming a new
meaningful whole which is more than the sum of its parts. Yet, Mukařovský goes further
as he investigates how this meaningful whole is composed through specific aesthetic
devices. Mukařovský (1982 [1925]: 683–685) claims that Němcová presents countless
details of everyday village life as a steadily flowing and harmonious narrative stream to
evoke an impression of a peaceful cosmological order and integrity. To test this claim,
Figure 1.  The landscape of meaning, implicit.
188	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
Mukařovský changes the order of some words and traces how the disrupted fluency
changes the meaning of the sentences. He points out that Němcová’s writing process
involved selecting words that conjure feelings of tranquility (Mukařovský, 1982 [1925]:
686–689). This is also the case with the sound aspect of the novel. Němcová diminished
the effects of sharp- and distinct-sounding words to minimize disruptive ‘jumps’ and
maintain a ‘soft melodic waviness’ (Mukařovský, 1982 [1925]: 690) in the text.
These stylistic selections, based on Němcová’s imaginative work, correspond to the
broader conception of theory as defined in the previous section. The overall meaning of
The Grandma—the landscape of meaning the novel mediates—is reconstructed as a conjunction
of numerous evidential descriptions and Němcová’s ability to theorize them.
That is, Němcová ‘moves beyond data toward deeper meaning’ with the utmost goal ‘to
make the meaningful landscape intelligible to the reader, to render its contours clearly’,
so the social actions she writes about ‘must come to make sense’ (Reed, 2011: 115–116).
Thus, if we are to ‘make sense’ of the novel and not just summarize and categorize its
content, we must look at how it comes to life through every single paragraph, sentence,
and word shaped by the author’s imaginative theorizing.
The aesthetic structure can be simply defined as an outcome of structural-aesthetic
analysis, as performed by Mukařovský in the case of The Grandma. Ultimately, structural-aesthetic
analysis delineates (1) how the landscape of meaning has been theorized
by the author’s imaginative practice; (2) how it is reconstructed by the text’s aesthetic
devices; and (3) how it is activated by the reader in the reading process. For the analysis
to be complete, the author-text-reader interaction must be analyzed with respect to their
socio-historical backgrounds, which include the conditions of literary production and
reception of the text among various discourses and publics. Mukařovský (1935) points
out, on the one hand, how the social conditions of production relate to specific aesthetic
features like sentence structure, length, and complexity of phrasing; and, on the other
hand, how various reading publics endow literary texts with meaning at a given time and
place. Here, it is important to emphasize that ‘interpretive communities’ (Fish, 1982)
play a vital role in the meaning-making, yet, it should not lead to the dismissal of the
author’s (Childress and Friedkin, 2012: 50–51) and novel’s9
(Alworth, 2016; Felski,
2015) participation in the overall landscape of meaning. In accordance with Mukařovský
(1935), the mutual relation between a literary work and socio-historical conditions of its
production/reception can be accessed through various discourses about this work (cf.
Griswold, 1987). The aesthetic structure is like a map, which gives us hints about all
kinds of relations between the elements that constitute the landscape of meaning channeled
by the novel (see ‘The landscape of meaning, explicit’ in Figure 2). With such a
map, cultural sociologists have access to a deeper understanding mediated by the novel
without necessarily filtering it through sociological theories.
I demonstrate the proposed model in a brief structural-aesthetic analysis of Sister by
Jáchym Topol (2000 [1994]) in three successive steps focusing on (1) segments of the
literary space relevant to the chosen novel and accessible through discourses about the
novel, (2) the aesthetic devices in the novel, and (3) their relation to each other and to the
overall landscape of meaning mediated in the reading process.
In the first step, I investigated the position of Topol and Sister in Czech literary space
through the analysis of literary reviews, critiques, online blogs, television interviews,
Váňa	 189
and radio debates from the date of the novel’s publication until the end of 2017.10
An
inquiry into the novel’s reception and various interpretations circulating in the public
discourse provided a preliminary idea of cultural meanings related to the reading experience
of Sister. In the second step, I read the book repeatedly to outline its aesthetic structure
(Mukařovský, 1971, 1978). I focused on how the author channels social experience
through the formal qualities of the text. In the third step, I followed the method of
Harrington (2002: 56), who suggests that the ‘relation between . . . the discursive and the
lyrical’ is that of a ‘hermeneutic circle’. I repeated the first vis-à-vis the second step, so
the analysis of public discourse and the aesthetic structure informed each other, until I
found the interpretive potential exhausted. Here, it is important to note that different
readers attribute different meanings to Sister, depending on socio-cultural space where
the interpretive community is situated. For example, allusions to Native American cosmology
in Sister only make sense to an interpretive community familiar with youth culture
based on the western genre in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s. For the
analysis to be comprehensive, I strove to include a variety of discourses, whose preliminary
understanding would potentially unlock new ways of meaningful reading (cf. Fish,
1982: 3). This allowed me to understand how the landscape of meaning is reconstructed
via the aesthetic devices of the text and, subsequently, to access the deeper meanings
mediated by Sister. In the next section, I demarcate these meanings according to three
Figure 2.  The landscape of meaning, explicit.
190	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
main organizing principles: dis/continuity of time perception, dis/continuity of language,
and the alternation between the immersion and alienation of the reader.
Analysis of Sister
Introducing the Novel
Published in 1994, Sister (Topol, 2000 [1994]) immediately became the center of Czech
literary debates. It was designated ‘one of the best literary depictions of the wretchedness
of 1980s Czechoslovakia and the transition to freedom’ (Czech Literature, n.d.), capturing
the ‘social chaos before and after 1989, generating streams of ambiguous images and
language expressions . . . that evoke the life-feelings of a generation imbued with deep
skepticism towards the false ideals [of the communist era]’ (Machala, 2008: 292)11
—a
‘depiction of the life-feeling of a whole generation’ (Chvatík, 1994). Most reviews
praised the novel as a breakthrough in post-communist Czech culture. Soon after, it was
canonized as a symbol representing the cultural values of the newly achieved democratic
regime.12
For decades, Sister has been included in the Czech educational curriculum, and
its importance has been further consecrated by a series of literary awards and symbolic
honors.13
With translations into German (1998), Hungarian (1998), English (2000),
Polish (2002), and Slovenian (2007), Sister has also become an important national-cultural
export and Jáchym Topol has become a living legend.
However, Sister has not exactly been a bestseller.14
Reviewers often highlighted its
rather chaotic construction (e.g. Chvatík, 1994; Foldyna, 2008; Gabriel, 1994; Hybler,
1995). Over 500 pages of ‘unrestrained volcanic force’ (Šlajchrt, 1994) are brimming
with complex metaphors, intertextual fictional allusions, and sophisticated real-world
references, as well as misleading hints, blind paths, and mysterious fantastic entities.
Sister provides a maximal interpretation of social experience during (post-)1989
Czechoslovakia. The landscape of meaning reconstructed by the novel, which is emblematic
of the life-feeling of a generation, has been consolidated as a ‘representative type’ in
the Lukácsian sense (Laurenson and Swingenwood, 1972: 55). Unlike Lukács’ (1964)
favorite genre of literary realism, the style embraced by Topol can be described as ‘modern
epic’ (Moretti, 1996). While the traditional epic communicated deep cultural meanings
through ‘cosmic’ and ‘mythical’ forms, Sister mediates them through ‘the minutiae
of everyday life and the finite fleeting experiences of an insignificant individual’
(Harrington, 2002: 57).
Dis/Continuity of Time Perception
Although it is not easy to follow a consistent linear time frame in Sister, it is possible to
identify a few stable historical reference points. In the summer of 1989, the main character
and narrator, Potok,15
and his female lover mysteriously called ‘Little White She-Dog’,16
observe a scene with crowds of East Germans climbing over the fence of the German
embassy in Prague trying to reach West Germany. Until the Velvet Revolution,17
the couple
spend most of their time locked away from the lifeless world of real socialism,18
enjoying the private pleasures of their passionate, even animal-like, love. The
Váňa	 191
discontinuity in the perception of time flow is expressed through sensual metaphors. The
‘prehistoric times’(Topol, 2000 [1994]: 42) of the era before 1989 are described as ‘being
sealed in a can’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 416). Living in such ‘sour times’ grayness’ (Topol,
2000 [1994]: 33–34) feels like being pressed in a narrow space, where everything seems
still, monolithic, and dull. We can measure such time conventionally. Yet, from a phenomenological
perspective, stressed by the expression ‘human time’ (Topol 2000 [1994]: 37),
it is rather static. Private passion, into which Potok and She-Dog escape from the gray and
banal reality, manifests itself with heightened, almost primordial intensity.
When the revolutionary events take off, this way of life is no longer possible. Topol
employs aesthetic devices to evoke the feeling of a drastic, irreversible change in the
perception of time; he conveys a shock similar to one caused by a huge physical force,
‘the explosion of time’(Topol, 2000 [1994]: 50). The loss of a sense of continuity—however
gray and dull it was—threatens ontological security. Time, which in the old regime
was only latently present in the background, is suddenly ‘flyin [sic] like a mad horse’
(Topol, 2000 [1994]: 183), exploding and bursting with colors. If concentrated in the
form of ‘time grenades’, this uncontrollable force can easily ‘blow [one’s] head off’
(Topol, 2000 [1994]: 441). Time acquires a new ontological quality. It ‘has its own color,
taste, and smell’ (Kouba, 2013 [2003]: 103) and can be ‘glimpsed’ or ‘touched’ (Topol,
2000 [1994]: 51). Potok is forced to deal not only with the changing political regime, but
with the very new ontological condition—with a fundamental discontinuity on an existential
level.
Along with the explosion of time, the new historical era starts with its own calendar,
counting the ‘years 1, 2, and 3 . . .’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 50). Let us return to the paragraph
quoted at the beginning of this article. The situation described seems to be the same
as usual—people ‘walking the street’, the ‘weather’, ‘clouds above and asphalt below’
(Topol, 2000 [1994]: 37)—everything seems orderly. Even time can be measured by a
clock, which shows half past six. However, the same concreteness used to depict the children,
dogs, and asphalt is applied to the abstract concepts of ‘freedom’ and ‘accelerating
time’. The almost incidental position of ‘freedom’in the text assures the reader it is just as
common as clouds and people walking. The poetic expression ‘time out of joint’ acquires
the same concreteness as children and dogs. According to Mukařovský (1971: 151–152),
the overall meaning of the aesthetic structure changes throughout the process of reading
with every new sign perceived by the reader. Thus, the abstract concepts of freedom and
time placed in the list of mundane objects disrupt the ordinary picture of the street, endowing
them with a new quality. There are no more ‘people as always’, but ‘people experiencing
freedom’. At the same time, all that has been read influences the meaning of every
new sign (Mukařovský, 1971: 151–152). The new sensations of time and freedom are
intrinsically present within the context of the everyday hustle, as though they have always
been part of it. The aesthetic qualities of the text express here a discontinuity in continuity.
The city of Prague paces its usual daily routine, but at the same time, it does not.
Dis/Continuity of Language
Post-1989 language ‘had exploded along with time’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 41). Its ambiguous
character is not only latently driving the frantic pace of Sister, but is thoroughly
reflected by the narrator himself. Referring to the biblical story of the confusion of
192	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
tongues, Potok distinguishes between a ‘pre-Babylonian’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 234) and
a ‘post-Babylonian’ language era. The pre-Babylonian language of communism was
clear, straightforward, but lacking its own agency since it was restrained by official ideology.
The post-Babylonian language of post-communism is totally unbounded from any
restrictive force—it becomes an autonomous agent. While the pre-Babylonian language
was repressed, the post-Babylonian language is itself repressive. Since control over the
post-Babylonian language is no longer centralized, various actors ‘steal words from each
other’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 234) and try to capture and manipulate them for their own
interest. The temptations of new opportunities make post-communist Czechoslovakia a
new ‘Klondike’ of the ‘Wild East’ where ‘pubs buzz with fast talk full of loopholes and
taxes on declared and undeclared income, licenses and contracts’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]:
81). This new language is ‘broken’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 474) and ‘bewitching’ (Topol,
2000 [1994]: 48) at the same time.
The ultimate metaphor for post-1989 language in Sister is a sequence of three words:
‘blather, babel and Babylon’ (Topol 2000 [1994]: 175). ‘Blather’, as an expression for
nonsensical or incoherent speech, predetermines the meaning of the whole triad. The
opening of Czechoslovak borders confronted the Czech language with languages, which
were hitherto inaccessible. For most Czechs, freedom after 1989 overlapped with the
Babylonian confusion of language, rendering any non-Czech (and non-Russian) language
meaningless blathering. Although ‘babel’ and ‘Babylon’ have the same biblical
reference, ‘babel’ additionally refers to Jewish mysticism19
and to the literature of the
Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who was admired for his colorful depictions of
lower-class colloquial speech and criminal slang. The meaning of these intertextual and
real-world references is delivered through the rhetorical device of assonance: the repetition
of vowel sounds.20
The onomatopoetic quality of the triad manifests itself as an
incantation: a rhythmical and melodic conjuring which can be understood without knowing
the actual language. The audible aspects are an indivisible part of the wording, yet
they cannot be simply expressed in words. The only way to capture their full meaning is
through the experience and emotional engagement of the reader. The incantation is then
recognized as a part of the entire aesthetic structure of the novel, allowing the reader to
feel the emergence of this vibrant, buoyant, and intricate post-revolutionary language set
within the complex socio-historical background.
Since the prior formal language of communism is dead, the new era demands a new
means of communication—something more universal, closer to life, almost primordial.
Potok experiments with language, seeking a language that is ‘tender and cruel’, ‘swift
and agile’ (Topol 2000 [1994]: 34), and stretches the possibilities of human communication
to its limits. Yet, he hopes the confused language will settle and ‘give rise to a new
tongue . . . of peace’ (Topol, 2000 [1994]: 234), which will be like the pre-Babylonian,
but in the era of freedom. What seemed at first an inescapable discontinuity is now perceived
as a continuity in discontinuity: The possibility to build a new, better language
upon the ruins of the old one.
The Dialogue Between Sister and its Reader
In the previous two sections, I demonstrated how Sister mediates the experience of the
new ontological quality of time and language through aesthetic devices. However,
Váňa	 193
another important way of triggering the emotional engagement of the reader occurs on a
higher level of abstraction: the organization of the text itself. Words, sentences, and
entire blocks of texts in Sister are often connected by triple-dots (ellipses), thus creating
unresolved situations and blank spaces calling for completion by the reader. Sister consists
of many lengthy passages in which the excessive use of the ellipsis gradually builds
up the impression of a never-ending stream of consciousness,21
as if Potok’s thought
process was occurring in real time. The reader, lured by the author’s artful writing, is not
given any straightforward account of social experience. Rather, with only a handful of
clues provided, the reader is left in a dialogue with the text, trying to solve its puzzles and
resolve its ambiguities. The textual entities are not fully closed, thus trapping the reader
in an endless process of meaning-making. Within the stream of consciousness, the convergence
of the text and the reader is more likely to foster the reader’s immersion.
At the same time, these moments of heightened immersion alternate with moments of
alienation,22
which are maintained by linguistic devices such as inventing new words,
confusing colloquial and formal word forms, and mixing up phonetic word forms with
written ones. The alienation effect is achieved through ‘tricks’ performed on the reader:
‘It is a world driven by [the author] where he can play and fool around, making crazy fun
of us’ (Bílek, 1994: 17). By alternating between immersion and alienation, Topol evokes
an impression of an extensive tension between, on the one hand, excitement, euphoria,
and the flow of the new fast-paced era brimming with opportunities and, on the other
hand, nostalgia, anxiety, and uncertainty which inevitably comes with the outbreak of
freedom. Sister, then, becomes an intriguing landscape of meaning, skillfully depicting
the author’s experience and feelings processed by his imaginative theorizing, bringing
about a new, lyrical understanding of social experience, not only when his readers interpret
it but when they re-feel it.
Conclusion
This article aimed to establish methodological and epistemological foundations for a
new sociology of literature. In terms of methodology, I suggest a way for cultural sociology
to unlock the depths of cultural meanings mediated by a literary piece without translating
it into sociological discourse. The understanding in Sister is not mediated by an
exhaustive enumeration of facts or evidence, but by the author’s ‘awareness of . . . relations
in flux’ transformed into a text through specific stylistic and formal selections
(Laurenson and Swingenwood, 1972: 55). The literary awareness and style correspond
to the author’s theorizing in a broader sense. The author’s ability to transform real-world
experience into a meaningful whole—a landscape of meaning—which is built upon this
experience and, at the same time, transcends it. That is, by means of aesthetic devices,
Sister mediates deeper understanding of social experience and of more general patterns
in which this experience is embedded.
The main epistemological proposition for cultural sociology is what Richard Hoggart
(1966: 277–278) already suggested more than 50 years ago: that ‘literature provides . . .
[a] new and distinctive’ understanding of social experience, ‘which no other source can
give’ (also see Harrington, 2002; Noble, 1976; Pincott, 1970). In the model I propose,
‘new and distinctive’ refers to the emotional, existential, and non-discursive dimensions
194	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
of social experience, which are mediated by the aesthetic aspects of a literary text. ‘Poetic
discourse’ is not bound by ‘the facts, empirical objects, and logical constraints of our
established ways of thinking’, but rather by ‘the need to bring to language modes of
being that ordinary vision obscures or even represses’(Ricoeur, 1976: 59–60). For example,
the time, language, and emotions in Sister are ‘indexical’ (Abbott, 2007: 94), as they
do not refer to an ordered structure, but to a subjective experience mediated anew each
time they are instantiated by reading. Such experience always partially evades verbal
signification due to its fleeting and polyvalent nature. It is a feature of poetic discourse
to refer beyond the words. Literature, then, can address the general question of interpretive
sociology ‘What was it like to . . .?’ (Reed, 2011: 89–90) through reconstruction of
human subjectivities with all their ambiguity and peculiarity.
At the same time, literary fiction has a capacity to unravel deeper meanings from
the textures of human subjectivity. Deeper meanings are not addressed simply through
a direct reference, but they emerge, for example, from impressions of a character living
through a single day, as famously demonstrated by James Joyce (1992 [1922]) in
Ulysses. We can find an analogy to Lukács’ and Goldmann’s conception of ‘totality’
(Boelhower, 1980) as the ability of a text to grasp infinite social wholeness by the
means of finite textual tools. Through the skillful use of aesthetic devices in descriptions
of subjective social experience, a literary author can indirectly create a maximal
interpretation of more general social milieu. When we read about a character whose
life is turned upside down in 1989 Czechoslovakia, we also learn something about all
the people who experienced the Velvet Revolution. Hence the feeling of truthfulness—
a ‘reality-effect’ (Greenblatt, 1997: 20), ‘verisimilitude’ (Becker, 2007: 248), or
‘vraisemblance’ (Atkinson, 1990: 62)—an experience of getting to know the ‘real’
world outside the text by means of reading the text.
It is no accident that sociologists often choose for their analysis ‘high-brow’texts like
those written by Robert Musil (Harrington, 2002), JaneAusten (Becker, 2007; Thompson,
2015), Jorge L. Borges (Kurakin, 2010),August Strindberg (Swedberg, 2016), or Herman
Melville (Alworth, 2014). Recognition by literary critics and cultural intermediaries is an
indication that a novel has a potential to represent a social phenomenon—that it successfully
mediates deeper understanding of social experience. However, even ‘low-brow’
and genre literature have great potential to facilitate access to deeper cultural meanings.
Putting into relation aesthetic aspects of a ‘low-brow’ novel with relevant public discourses
can show us emotionally resonant cultural meanings that circulated in a society
in a given time and place. Iconic dystopias like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or
George Orwell’s 1984 earned a great deal of attention as parables epitomizing the negative
aspects of the late modernity and technological progress. The popularity of detective
stories and spy novels, as Boltanski (2014) shows, stemmed from the unpronounced
tension between state-driven order and deviations which undermine its universality.
Eva Illouz (2014: 7) suggests that best-sellers like Fifty Shades of Grey ‘are defined by
their capacity to capture values’ that are ‘dominant and widely institutionalized’.
Investigating how Fifty Shades of Grey maintains emotional engagement with its readers
could bring us closer to an understanding of cultural meanings related to sexuality in contemporary
western societies. We can witness the emotional engagement in fan communities,
blogs, film adaptations, all kinds of unofficial social media follow-ups including
Váňa	 195
popular memes or parodies, and so on. Yet still, we would have to resist the temptation to
reduce the analysis of a novel to an analysis of the novel’s social surroundings. Discourses
of interpretive communities should navigate the structural-aesthetic analysis, but they
should not replace it. Therefore, we would follow how the specific sound and rhythm of
the wording builds up an erotic tension, which cannot be easily described by words. This
non-discursive tension, perhaps, is a maximal interpretation of ‘love, intimacy, and sex’in
western culture (Illouz, 2014: 5), which has been sought by and resonated among the millions
of readers all over the world.
It is the task for a new sociology of literature to probe the variety of possibilities in
which the aesthetic aspects of literary texts relate to the social. Cultural sociologists can
find in literature a powerful ally for understanding the social world, but only if they
respect that in this complex organism ‘the meaning emerges of its own volition’(Hoggart,
1966: 281) and cannot simply be dissected without being damaged. What is essential is
that the literature must speak for itself. If cultural sociologists understand how the literature
mediates the understanding of social experience through its own means—the means
of metaphors, sounds, and rhythms—then they can embrace this understanding for their
own cultural sociological research.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article: This research was financially supported by a Specific research project at
Masaryk University, project number MUNI/A/1359/2019.
ORCID iD
Jan Váňa   https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7278-1833
Notes
  1.	 For an overview of the history and ‘the state of the art’ in sociological studies of literature see
Váňa (2020).
  2.	 In the Czech original, the novel’s title is Sestra (Sister) and it is divided into three subsections
titled ‘Město’ (City), ‘Sestra’ (Sister), and ‘Stříbro’ (Silver).
 3.	 In the case of science, Nisbet (1962: 72–73) speaks about a possibility ‘to verify . . . by
repeating the process’, or a possibility to support new ideas through the experience of someone
other than their author.
  4.	 Seven out of eight articles are based on the field theory of Pierre Bourdieu. The one exception
(Sato et al., 2015) employs organizational analysis, which, just like field theory, investigates
the social institutions surrounding literature, not the literature itself.
 5.	 Reed (2011: 30) names these three examples to show that they all employ social theory
together with evidence ‘to produce new social knowledge’. In this sense, Reed does not differentiate
between theorizing in ethnographic and non-ethnographic ways of sociological
inquiry.
  6.	 Reed (2011: 25) claims that maximal interpretation serves ‘to produce the social knowledge
that we tend to value highly’. Nevertheless, because novels do not usually mediate knowledge
in the sense of (social) sciences, I prefer the word ‘understanding’.
  7.	 Serrão puts explicitation in contrast to explication. The former is based in Verstehen tradition
of Weberian sociology, whereas the latter is close to explanation in a more positivistic
196	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
tradition of Durkheim. I use explicitation to stress understanding literary fiction without
translating it into sociological discourse.
  8.	 Founded in 1926, the Prague Linguistic Circle was an association of linguists who engaged
critically with Saussurean structuralism and Russian formalism (cf. Toman, 1995).
  9.	 For an illuminating debate on the agency of literary works see the recent developments influenced
by science and technology studies (Alworth, 2016; Felski, 2015; Latour, 2016).
10.	 The total number of inspected sources is 52. Due to space limitations, it is not feasible to
cite them all. However, most of the textual sources can be found in Říha (2013) and Machala
(2008).
11.	 All the Czech sources were translated by me.
12.	 In 2017, Topol received an award from the Czech Ministry of Defense for his ‘anti-communist
resistance’.
13.	 After the publication of Sister, Topol was honored with the Egon Hostovský Prize (1995),
the Book of the Year Prize (2005), the Jaroslav Seifert Prize (2010), and the State Award for
Literature (2017).
14.	 Topol (2012) says that in the 20 years the book has been in print, only about 20,000 copies
have been sold. For comparison, popular Czech novels in the 1990s typically sold tens of
thousands of copies per year. The most extreme case is a satirical novel Black Barons by
Miloslav Švandrlík; more than 750,000 copies were sold during a single year (Šimeček and
Trávníček, 2014: 384–392).
15.	 The name refers to the name of the author, which has a similar phonetic structure: Topol–
Potok. In Czech, Topol means poplar and Potok means creek, which is a reference to Native
American names based on natural motifs.
16.	 Also a Native American connotation, in this case to animality.
17.	 Aseriesofnon-violentpopulardemonstrationsagainsttheCommunistPartyofCzechoslovakia
that took place from 17 November to 29 December 1989.
18.	 The era between 1968 and 1989 in Czechoslovakia. The term refers to the discrepancy
between the theoretical socialism of Marxist theorists and the existing socialism of the Soviet
bloc.
19.	 ‘Babel’ is the Hebrew name for Babylon.
20.	 In Czech, the sequence goes ‘blábol, bábel, Babylon’, which makes the phonetic resemblance
between the words even stronger.
21.	 This technique was famously used by James Joyce (1992 [1922]), especially in the closing
part of Ulysses in the inner monologue of Molly Bloom.
22.	 Originally translated as defamiliarization, a term coined in 1917 by Russian formalist Viktor
Shklovsky, who claimed that literary language is fundamentally different from non-literary
language.
References
Abbott A (2007) Against narrative: A preface to lyrical sociology. Sociological Theory 25(1):
67–99. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9558.2007.00298.x.
Alexander JC (2015) Afterword: The strong program and the iconic turn. Sociologica 9(1): 1–8.
https://doi.org/10.2383/80398.
Alexander JC, Smith P, Norton M, et al. (2011) Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigation
in the Social Sciences. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Alworth DJ (2014) Melville in the asylum: Literature, sociology, reading. American Literary
History 26(2): 234–261. https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/aju019.
Alworth DJ (2016) Latour and literature. In: Middeke M and Reinfandt C (eds) Theory Matters:
The Place of Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies Today. London: Springer, 305–318.
Váňa	 197
Atkinson P (1990) The Ethnographic Imagination: Textual Constructions of Reality. London and
New York: Routledge.
Becker HS (1982) Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Becker HS (2007) Telling About Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Beer D (2016) Fiction and social theory: E-special introduction. Theory, Culture & Society 33(7–
8): 409–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276415595912.
Berger M (1977) Real and Imagined Worlds: The Novel and Social Science. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Bílek PA (1994) Topolův román . . .uličnický. . . . [Topol’s Novel . . . Rowdy . . .]. Tvar 5(16):
17–18.
Boelhower W (1980) Introduction. In: Lucien Goldmann: Essays on Method in the Sociology of
Literature. St Louis, MO: Telos Press, 5–34.
Boltanski L (2014) Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of
Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu P (1996) The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Brinkmann S (2009) Literature as qualitative inquiry: The novelist as researcher. Qualitative
Inquiry 15(8): 1376–1394. DOI:10.1177/1077800409332030.
Brown RH (1977) A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Carlin AP (2010) The corpus status of literature in teaching sociology: Novels as ‘sociological
reconstruction’. The American Sociologist 41(3): 211–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-
010-9096-8.
Childress CC and Friedkin NE (2012) Cultural reception and production: The social construction
of meaning in book clubs. American Sociological Review 77(1): 45–68. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0003122411428153.
Chvatík K (1994) Zběsilost [Fury]. Tvar 5(16): 17.
Coser LA (1963) Sociology through Literature: An Introductory Reader. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-hall.
Czech Literature (n.d.) Jáchym Topol. Czech Literature Online. Available at: https://www.czechlit.cz/en/author/jachym-topol-en-2/
(accessed 3 April 2018).
Edling CR and Rydgren J (eds) (2010) Sociological Insights of Great Thinkers: Sociology through
Literature, Philosophy, and Science. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Erasga DS (2010) When story becomes theory: Storytelling as sociological theorizing. AsiaPacific
Social Science Review 10(1): 21–38.
Eyerman R (2006) Toward a meaningful sociology of the arts. In: Eyerman R and McCormick
L (eds) Myth, Meaning and Performance: Toward a New Cultural Sociology of the Arts.
London: Paradigm Publishers, 19–40.
Felski R (2008) Uses of Literature. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Felski R (2015) Latour and literary studies. PMLA 130(3): 737–742. https://doi.org/10.1632/
pmla.2015.130.3.737.
Fish S (1982) Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Foldyna L (2008) Jáchym Topol: Sestra. In: Hruška P, et al. (eds) V Souřadnicích Volnosti: česká
Literatura Devadesátých Let Dvacátého Století v Interpretacích. Prague: Academia, 403–
408.
Franssen T and Kuipers G (2015) Sociology of literature and publishing in the early 21st century:
Away from the centre. Cultural Sociology 9(3): 291–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/
1749975515594467.
198	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
Gabriel J (1994) Byl čas po výbuchu a my žili v rozvalinách [It was the time after the explosion
and we lived in ruins]. Literární noviny 5(24): 6.
Geertz C (1973) Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. In: The Interpretation of Cultures.
New York: Basic Books, 412–453.
Geertz C (1980) Blurred genres: The refiguration of social thought. The American Scholar 49(2):
165–179.
Greenblatt S (1997) The touch of the real. Representations 59(July): 14–29. DOI:10.2307/2928812.
Griswold W (1987) The fabrication of meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States, Great
Britain, and the West Indies. American Journal of Sociology 92(5): 1077–1117. https://doi.
org/10.1086/228628.
Harrington A (2002) Knowing the social world through literature: Sociological reflections
on Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. International Journal of Social Research
Methodology 5(1): 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645570110098073.
Harrington A (2004) Art and Social Theory: Sociological Arguments in Aesthetics. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Hegtvedt KA (1991) Teaching sociology of literature through literature. Teaching Sociology
19(1): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.2307/1317567.
Hoggart R (1966) Literature and society. The American Scholar 35(2): 277–289.
Hybler M (1995) Topolova přepestrá Sestra [Topol’s Too Colorful Sister]. Kritická Příloha
Revolver Revue 2: 56–59.
Illouz E (2014) Hard-Core Romance: “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Best-Sellers, and Society. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jacobsen MH and Marshman S (2008) Bauman’s metaphors: The poetic imagination in sociology.
Current Sociology 56(5): 798–818. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392108093836.
Joyce J (1992 [1922]) Ulysses. London: Penguin Books.
Kouba P (2013 [2003]) Čas a věčnost v topolově sestře [Time and Eternity in Topol’s Sister]. In:
Říha I (ed.) Otevřený Rány: Vybrané Studie O Díle Jáchyma Topola [Open Wounds. Selected
Studies on Jáchym Topol’s Work]. Prague: Torst, 89–117.
Kurakin D (2010) Literature as a meaningful life laboratory. Integrative Psychological and
Behavioral Science 44(3): 227–234. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-010-9138-3.
Kuzmics H (2015) Using fiction as sociology: How to analyze emotions with the help of novels.
In: Flam H and Kleres J (eds) Methods of Exploring Emotions. London and New York:
Routledge, 25–35.
Latour B (2016) Life among conceptual characters. New Literary History 47(2–3): 463–476.
https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.2016.0023.
Laurenson D and Swingenwood A (1972) The Sociology of Literature. London: Paladin.
Lepenies W (1988) Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology. New York: Cambridge
University Press and Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
Longo M (2016) Fiction and Social Reality: Literature and Narrative as Sociological Resources.
Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Lukács G (1964) Studies in European Realism. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
Machala L (2008) Próza [Prose]. In Hruška P, et al. (eds) V souřadnicích volnosti: česká literatura
devadesátých let dvacátého století v interpretacích [In the Coordinates of Freedom: Czech
Literature of the Nineties of the 20th Century in the Interpretations]. Prague: Academia.
Misztal BA (2016) Sociological imagination and literary intuition. Comparative Sociology 15(3):
300–323. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691330-12341390.
Moretti F (1996) Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez. London: Verso.
Mukařovský J (1935) Poznámky k sociologii básnického jazyka [Notes on the sociology of poetic
language]. Slovo a slovesnost 1(1): 29–38.
Váňa	 199
Mukařovský J (1971) Studie z estetiky [Studies from Aesthetics]. Prague: Odeon.
Mukařovský J (1978) On structuralism. In: Burbank J and Steiner P (eds) Structure, Sign, and
Function: Selected Essays by Jan Mukařovský. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 3–16.
Mukařovský J (1982 [1925]) Pokus na slohový rozbor Babičky Boženy Němcové [Attempt at a
stylistic analysis of Božena Němcová’s ‘Grandmother’]. In: Studie z poetiky. Prague: Odeon,
683–693.
Němcová B (1924 [1855]) Babička [The Grandma]. Prague: Česká grafická Unie.
Nisbet RA (1962) Sociology as an art form. Pacific Sociological Review 5(2): 67–74. https://doi.
org/10.2307/1388389.
Nisbet RA (1977) Sociology as an Art Form. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Noble T (1976) Sociology and literature. The British Journal of Sociology 27(2): 211–224. https://
doi.org/10.2307/590028.
Olave Thumala MA (2018) Reading matters: Towards a cultural sociology of reading. American
Journal of Cultural Sociology 6(3): 417–454. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-017-0034-x.
Pasco AH (2016) Balzac, Literary Sociologist. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Petersen A and Jacobsen MH (2012) Houellebecq’s dystopia – A case of the elective affinity
between sociology and literature. In: Mestrovic S, Tester K and Jacobsen MH (eds) Utopia:
Social Theory and the Future. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 97–120.
Pincott R (1970) The sociology of literature. European Journal of Sociology 11(1): 177–195.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975600002034.
Radway JA (1984) Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Reed IA (2011) Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the Use of Theory in the Human
Sciences. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press.
Ricoeur P (1976) Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth:
Texas Christian University Press.
Říha I (2013) Otevřený Rány: Vybrané Studie O Díle Jáchyma Topola. Prague: Torst.
Sato I, Haga M and Yamada M (2015) Lost and gained in translation: The role of the ‘american
model’ in the institution-building of a Japanese university press. Cultural Sociology 9(3):
347–363. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975515592654.
Serrão P (2017) Towards sociology from the arts: An epistemological turn. Sociology Compass
11(8), e12498. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12498.
Smith P (2008) The Balinese cockfight decoded: Reflections on Geertz, the strong program and
structuralism. Cultural Sociology 2(2): 169–86. DOI:10.1177/1749975508091031.
Smith P (2004) Marcel Proust as successor and precursor to Pierre Bourdieu: A fragment. Thesis
Eleven 79(1): 105–111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513604046960.
Šimeček Z and Trávníček J (2014) Knihy kupovati . . . : dějiny knižního trhu v českých zemích
[Buying Books . . .: History of the Book Industry in the Czech Lands]. Prague: Academia.
Singer AE (2011) A novel approach: The sociology of literature, children’s books, and social
inequality. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 10(4): 307–320.
Šlajchrt V (1994) Dobrodružství – klíče ke světu [Adventure – keys to the world]. Respekt
5(25): 15.
Swedberg R (2014) From theory to theorizing. In: Swedberg R (ed.) Theorizing in Social Science:
The Context of Discovery. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1–28.
Swedberg R (2016) The literary author as a sociologist? Among French Peasants by August
Strindberg. Journal of Classical Sociology 16(1): 124–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687
95X15574418.
Thompson J (2015) Jane Austen and Modernization: Sociological Readings. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
200	 Cultural Sociology 14(2)
Toman J (1995) The Magic of a Common Language: Jakobson, Mathesius, Trubetzkoy, and the
Prague Linguistic Circle. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Topol J (2000 [1994]) City, Sister, Silver. North Haven, CT: Catbird Press.
Topol J (2012) Jáchym Topol: Literární byznys už nemám rád, nechci se stát fabrikou. iHned.
cz 17. 3. 2012. Available at: https://art.ihned.cz/knihy/c1-55076000-jachym-topol-literarnibyznys-uz-nemam-rad-nechci-se-stat-fabrikou
(accessed 12 April 2018).
Váňa J (2020) More than just a product: Strengthening literature in sociological analysis. Sociology
Compass early view: 1–16. doi:10.1111/soc4.12789.
Ward JP (1986) Poetry and sociology. Human Studies 9(4): 323–345. https://doi.org/10.1007/
BF00143168.
Watson A (2016) Directions for public sociology: Novel writing as a creative approach. Cultural
Sociology 10(4): 431–447. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975516639081.
Zorbaugh H (1929) The Gold Coast and the Slum. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Author biography
Jan Váňa is a PhD student of sociology at Masaryk University in Brno. In his dissertation thesis, he
deals with cultural aspects of post-communist Czech society and with aesthetic representations of
(post-)communism in post-1989 Czech literature. His research topics include sociology of literature,
cultural sociology, sociological theory, and aesthetics. His long-term interest lies in transgressing
the institutional boundaries between social sciences and literature, which he pursues, for
example, by publishing socially engaged fiction.