Chaucer and the Sociology of Literature (1980)

Chaucer and the Sociology of Literature Stephen Knight University ofSydney I know how irritating it can be to treat discourses in terms not of the gentle, silent, intimate consciousness that is expressed in them, but of an obscure set ofanonymous rules. How unpleasant it is to reveal the limitationandnecessitiesofa practice where one is used to seeing, in all its pure transparency, the expression of a genius and freedom. How provocative it is to treat as a set of transformations this history of discourses which, until now, has been animated by the reassuring metaphors of life or the intentional continuity of the lived. Michel Foucault1 MANY people feel the sodology of litetatuce cecim fam about an author, a period, an audience and, worse, diminishes the individual liberty ofauthor and reader, inhibits the notionally crucial act of free evaluation. A jumped-up relative of the 'historical' section in a traditional college text's introduction. Irritating, unpleasant and pro­ vocative, as Foucault says above, to press such inhumane determinations on literature. True, the sociology of literature is concerned with facts; it does investigate the source, nature and dynamism of what seems an author's individuality, and it seeks to inhibit evaluation that is no more than a subjective league table of authors. But the important and relatively recent property of the sociology of literature is that, from its contacts with expanding disciplines like linguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, as well as from its old alliance with history, the approach has developed in the hands of European, particularly French, writers a powerful critique of the way in which literature functions in and for society. And it is also a critique of criticism, disclosing the social and political relations of the approaches traditionally pursued in literary studies. Much ofthis material has become available in English, and interpre1 The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock, 1972), p. 210. 15 · STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER tative guides have started to appear; students and teachers can now encounter analysis which has been doubly elusive, published in foreign languages and intrinsically difficult in any case. Chaucer's texts, in their historical position and their curious polyvalence, are particularly rich ground for socio-literary analysis. Recent developments in the sociology ofliterature help to explain features that have puzzled Chaucer's critics, strained their ingenuities to explain them away; and, secondly, they indicate more fully the dynamic nature of his texts, which put them among that small group whose power outlasts their period. Idealist critics have felt the 'survival' phenomenon adequately proves that the 'best' literature is quite unconnected to its social setting. In fact the lasting power ofsome texts comes from their authentichistorical nature, theveraciousway in which theyrealizeconflicts in the social relations ofa period, in the context of-and so revealing-the ideological limits of that period. The sociology ofliterature in a fully developed form has appeared in two waves. Before discussing at some length aspects of the recent socio-literary wave, it is relevant to consider the value and the limits of the older sociology ofliterature, characterized by the work of Escarpit, Goldmann, and Lukacs. Now often criticized, even dismissed, these writers have something to offer to Chaucer studies, as the three following brief sections will argue. 1. Literary Socio-metrics Robert Escarpit has proposed, in Sociology of Literature, a model of research which seeks facts about authors and audiences, raw data from which patterns and relations can be identified. This approach has not been taken much further, though some researchers into the nineteenth century (like Richard Altick and Louis James) have covered similar ground in a more impressionistic way. Most literary sociologists pass over this socio-metric work to pursue in-text studies; their own situa­ tion, bereft of statistical skills, time and assistance for fieldwork, is no doubt a factor here, but skepticism about the value of such a specific approach has also been evident; Escarpit himself seems to have moved away from it in Le Litteraire et le social. 2 2 Robert Escarpit, Sociology of Literature, trans. E. Pick, 2nd ed. (London: Cass, 1971); Robert Escarpit, ed., Le litteraire et lesocial: elementspour unesociologiede la litterature (Paris: Flammarion, 1970).Richard Altick, The English...