This volume offers a broad description of the development and perspectives of literary
sociology within the discipline of comparative literature. It brings together researchers who
work (implicitly or explicitly) within the field of comparative literature and who opt
methodologically for a broad approach that sees literary-theoretical problems as part of more
general cultural issues. Several research options that marked the history of literary sociology
or that can be considered as belonging to its legacy are presented in this book. The point of
departure is the observation that in the 60s and 70s a number of academics were convinced
that the discipline of comparative literature should be organized around a sociological model.
The tendency to consider literary sociology as the «pilot discipline» in comparative literature
persisted until the early 80s. However the earlier sociological models gradually lost much of
their historical-materialist aura and began to take the shape of less stringent
context-analyses. The newer forms of literary sociology often entered into an alliance with
semiotics and (post)structuralism or elaborated upon Mikhail Bakhtin. Alongside this
development there was a tendency within literary sociology to adopt empirical methods.
Moreover contemporary literary theory has also witnessed the rise of new avenues of research
that reflect the older literary-sociological principles. At the origin of texts in this volume
is the eponymous conference organized by the Belgian Association of General and Comparative
Literature in Ghent (April 6-7 2000).
