Henry Bamford Parkes
POE, HAWTHORNE, MELVILLE:
AN ESSAY IN SOCIOLOGICAL CRITICISM
Although the relationship between the creative writer and
the society to which he belongs is one of the perennial problems of
criticism, it has usually been discussed in decidedly superficial terms,
chiefly because the issues tend to be confused by a conflict about
values. In general, those critics who have been most anxious to em–
phasize the sociological implications of literature have belonged,
politically, to the left, and have required that writers should deal
realistically with social problems and should advocate reform or
revolution. Judging
art
by political rather than by aesthetic criteria,
they have accused writers whose work lacked explicit political con–
tent of trying to escape from reality into an ivory tower. On the other
hand, the practitioners of a strictly aesthetic criticism have often been
inclined to consider
art
as a wholly autonomous activity, to be valued
not for its content but for the technical skill displayed in it.
Obviously a complete interpretation of a work of art ought to
take account both of aesthetic and of sociological factors. A correct
definition of the relationship between the writer and society ought to
make it possible to regard these two methods of approach as com–
plementary rather than as mutually exclusive.
Every imaginative writer is engaged in giving expression to his
own view of life and his own emotional attitudes. His primary social
function is to heighten and enrich the consciousness of
his
readers and
to extend their range of emotional awareness, for which reason the
value of his work depends upon the precision and completeness of the
communication, not upon the moral and political implications which
may
be
deduced from it. This is as true of the realistic novelist as it
is
of
any
other kind of writer. The realist derives his material from
social problems and conflicts, but this is always filtered through
his
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