Expanding The Literary Horizon

Romantic Poets and Postmodern Sociologists

Bibliographic Data

ID2276699
AuthorsRegina Hewitt (University of South Florida, corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume35
Issue2
Pages195-213
Publication date1994-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.1994.tb00407.x
OpenAlexW1563512452
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited50

Although literary devices help postmodern sociologists distinguish their own perspectives from those of their subjects, literary borrowing also threatens to reduce the sociologist's perspective to one among many equivalent fictions. I argue that we can diminish this threat by expanding our notion of what literature can do. Current literary borrowings follow the institutionalized practice of separating literary from explanatory discourse, but pre-institutionalized precedents show that literature can serve to conceptualize situated behavior. I analyze one such precedent in the work of the poet John Keats (1795–1821), who formulated an almost Meadian interaction theory. Keat's use of unrealistic elements and an identifiable point of view to deploy them in his texts suggests ways in which sociologists might adapt literary conceptualization to foreground their understanding of the behavior they study

Aesthetics · Art · Conceptualization · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literary science · Literary theory · Literature · Perspective (graphical · Postmodernism · Romance · Situated · Sociology · Computer Science · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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