Sociological Approach

•Sociological criticism is based on the fact that there is a vital relationship between the art and the society in which the artist lives.

The time and the space in which the artist is fixed shape his thinking and genius. Hence, the sociological critic pays attention to ‘the social milieu and the extent to which and the manner in which the artist responds to it’.

•Sociological criticism is not a twentieth-century development. It dates back to the eighteenth century when Vico came out with a perceptive study of the social conditions in Greece which went into the composition of Homer’s epics.

•The nineteenth century brought to light two eminent sociological critics, the German Herder and the Frenchman Taine.

•Taine stressed the importance of three forces- ‘the race, the milieu, and the moment’ acting on the artist.

• By ‘race’, Taine means the hereditary temperament and disposition of people. By ‘milieu’ he means the combined influence of surroundings, climate, physical environment, political institutions, social conditions, and the like. By ‘moment’, Taine means the spirit of the period, or the particular stage of national development which has been reached at a particular point of time.

•Taine’s sociological theory has two serious limitations. First, it ignores the factor of personality and regards the individual writer as little more than a product of his race and epoch. It is only the minor writers who reflect their age. But the man of genius – Shakespeare is such a genius – is not a mechanical reflector of his age but a man of all times.

•Second, the sociological theory ignores the fact that literature has a double-sided relation with society. The great writer is not only a creature of his time but also its creator. He not only receives but also gives.

•Marxist interpretation of literature is a subspecies of sociological criticism. The economic depression consequent on the world wars led to the Marxist interpretation of social forces. Poets like Auden, C.Day Lewis, Stephen Spender and Archibald MacLeish expressed their Marxist leanings in their writings.

Journals like The New Masses and The Left Review popularized Marxist criticism. Books by single authors also promoted the cause of communism. The books by V.F.Calverton (The Liberation of American Literature), John Strachey (The Coming Struggle for Power) and Ralph Fox (The Novel and the People) belong to this category.

•Like the sociological critic Taine, Marxist critics also began to overemphasize the importance of their tools. They inflated the significance of isms like Americanism, Proletarianism, Socialism, Capitalism, and so on.

•Mellowed Marxist critics took steps to curb the excesses of Marxist criticism. Christopher Caudwell, James Farrell (Author of A Note on Literary Criticism) and Edmund Wilson (Author of The Triple Thinkers) represent this changed trend. Critics like Van Wyck Brooks have started viewing the writer not only as a creature but also as a creator of his age. F.O. Matthiessen author of The American Renaissance and L.C.Knights, author of Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson, represent this welcome change.

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