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POETICS ELSEVIER Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
www.elsevier.nl/locate/poetic
The eighteenth-century literary field in Western Europe: The
interdependence of material and
symbolic production and consumption*
Kees van Reesa,*, Gillis J. Dorleijnb
o Department of Language and Literature, Tilburg University,
P.O. Box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
h Department of Dutch Language and Literature, Groningen
University , P.O. Box 716, 9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands
Abstract
The papers of this special issue are introduced as instances of
a field-theoretic approach as articulated initially in Bourdieus
institutional analysis of the literary field. This approach is
presented as a sound alternative to traditional literary history
and its insufficiently relational view of historiography and of the
cultural object. In addition, it is situated critically with
respect to book history and previous institutional analyses in a
historical perspective. It focuses on the development of a literary
field in eighteenth-century Western Europe, at a time when the term
literature meant something quite different from what it means
nowadays. In the cultural-sociological perspective advocated here,
one must take account of the interde- pendency of material and
symbolic production and consumption. Therefore, an approach is
needed which integrates institutional analysis with an examination
of the impact of concep- tions of literature, that is, sets of
normative ideas on the nature and function of literature. These
conceptions affect the practices of all agents in the field,
irrespective of whether they focus on symbolic or material
production, or even on consumption. 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.
1. Principles of research into the literary field
In his seminal article, entitled The field of cultural
production, or the economic world reversed, Bourdieu (1983) defined
the cultural field as the space of cultural
* We are indebted to Gert-Jan Johannes, John Mohr and Hugo
Verdaasdonk for helpful critical com- ments on an earlier draft. *
Corresponding author. Phone +31 13 466 2666; E-mail:
[email protected]
0304-422X/01/$ - see front matter 0 2001 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved. PII: SO304-422X(00)00038-3
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332 K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
position takings (prises de position) that are possible in a
given period in a given society. The cultural field comprises the
set of institutions or the group of agents performing specific
tasks in the production, distribution and promotion of symbolic
goods. At a given moment in time, the field constitutes the space
of positions constructed by these participating agents according to
the trajectories they followed. To analyze the cultural field of a
given society, one has to address questions such as the following
:
- What are the institutions of the cultural field? - How is each
of these institutions organized and how do they operate in
interaction
with each other? - How is the cultural field embedded in wider
social systems and how is it affected
by these systems?
In answering these questions one must take into account the
impact of conceptions of art, literature and culture as these are
used by members of institutions not only to plan their actions but
also to justify or rationalize their decisions. In any period,
agents in the cultural field draw on a specific normative
conception to induce among other members of that society a specific
perception and evaluation of cultural goods and practices.
A Bourdieuan-inspired analysis of the cultural field as a field
of forces is guided by two assumptions: (i) material production and
symbolic production are interde- pendent and simultaneous
processes; (ii) consumption of cultural goods is affected by this
interdependence and, in its turn, affects production (see also
DiMaggio, 1987). One of the implications for cultural sociology is
that the production of sym- bolic goods must be viewed as a
collective action involving, besides the creator, all creators of
the creator, that is, the agents producing belief in the value of
the goods in question. Hence, the cultural field is also described
as a world of belief (Bourdieu, 1977, 1980: 207ff.). This
constructionist view implies that through their struggles,
conflicts and apparently peaceful interactions, the parties
involved not only assign values to cultural products but also
reproduce the belief in the value of what is at stake, the belief
in the legitimacy of the agents actions and the belief in the
truth- fulness of their discourse.
Challenged by this theoretical framework, quite a few
researchers set themselves the task of developing and testing it by
examining specific relationships of symbolic power within the field
of their choice. In analyzing the functioning of institutions which
constitute the cultural field or one of its sub-fields, they
started to take account of the cultural fields being embedded
within the field of power, situated itself in what Bourdieu calls
the field of class relations.
It was not by chance that many of these studies appeared in this
Journal. Its new subtitle, Journal of empirical research on
literature, the media and the arts (added in 1989), underscored a
shift in focus that had been underway since the early 1980s. The
publication of Bourdieus (1983) article and its position- ing as
the institutional approach to the literary field (Van Rees, 1983:
290ff.) attested to this.
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K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 333
One such a subfield is the literary field , the set of literary
institutions, organiza- tions and agents involved in the material
and symbolic production and in the distri- bution of reading
materials So far, a large number of studies have been devoted to
the contemporary, that is, late twentieth-century, literary fields,
for the most part in Europe and North America. 2 These studies
focus on the operation of each of the institutions depicted in Fig.
1 and on the relations between these institutions.3
Fig. 1. Diagram of the twentieth-century literary field.
* For China see Hock (1998, 1999). 3 Fig. 1 is a model of a
particular historical situation: Western Europe during the late
twentieth cen- tury. It disregards the important issue of how this
subfield is embedded in the field of power relations. However, it
may illustrate the different parties that are at stake and their
interactions, and may incite stu- dents of other cultural and
historical settings to specify the agents relevant to their
domain.
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334 K. van Rees, G J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
Disregarding areas other than literature and irrespective of
whether or not Bourdieu is explicitly mentioned as a source or
reference point, we call to mind studies which illustrate the
relational perspective on the production and consumption of
literature. Unlike most students of the humanities, who adopt an
essentialist view of the work of art and claim that their expertise
permits them to lay bare a works intrinsic proper- ties, empirical
researchers have argued that, in addition to writers
position-takings, literary works owe their status, percived value
and ranking to the interaction between many other agents: in the
first place, agents of symbolic production such as critics,
teachers, magazine editors, juries; secondly, agents of material
production (publish- ers, chains of book stores, book clubs). Under
particular institutional constraints, these agents reports on their
encounters with particular works, their comments on the emergent
properties they notice in their encounters are orchestrated in a
consensus on how, for a given period, works are perceived and the
status which is assigned to them. A relational analysis permits
better understanding of how a broad range of institu- tional
factors affect practices peculiar to each of these agents. One of
the aims of this research is to gain a better understanding of the
production of symbolic value, that is, the assignment of properties
and quality to literary works, their classification and ranking.
Another related focal point is to understand how the processes of
material and symbolic production are interdependent. What is
perceived as a products qual- ity is thereby shown to be connected
with quality dimensions of material producers (prestige of
publishing houses), of distributors (elite book shop vs. popular
book- club), symbolic agents (authoritative critics and periodicals
of standing which pub- lish their reviews) rather than with
allegedly intrinsic properties of the work under study. Even though
researchers may focus on one of the slots in Fig. 1, their rela-
tionist viewpoint induces them also to pay attention to its
relations with other slots.
Writers: Segmentation of the literary field (Gerhards and
Anheier, 1989); social net- works and the classification of
literary authors (Anheier and Gerhards, 1991a,b; de Nooy, 1991);
literary prizes (de Nooy, 1988, 1989); reward systems (Rosengren,
1998); writers sideline activities (Janssen, 1998). Publishers:
Literary programs of publishing houses (Verdaasdonk, 1985; de Glas,
1998; Tilborghs, 1991); images of the audience in publishing
childrens books (Turow, 1982). Distributors: Public library
(Seegers and Verdaasdonk, 1987; Seegers, 1989; Schuur and Seegers,
1989); bookstores and buyers of books (Stokmans and Hen- drickx,
1994). Literary magazines: Literary magazines and their readership
(Verdaasdonk, 1989). Reviewing and criticism: Reviewers frame of
reference (Rosengren, 1983, 1987); critics selection and consensus
formation (van Rees, 1987; Janssen, 1997, 1999); the effect of
critical attention on authors careers (Barker-Nuns and Fine, 1998;
van Dijk, 1999; van Rees and Vermunt, 1996); effects of acquired
readership and reviewers attention on the sales of new literary
works (Verdaasdonk, 1988). Canon formation, identity and
multiculturalism: literary canon and identity (Corse, 1997; Bryson,
2000); cross-cultural literary transmission (Griswold and Bastian,
1987).
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K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 335
Readers attitudes and behavior: choice behavior toward books
(Duijx et al., 1991; Leemans and Stokmans, 1991; Seegers and de
Jong, 1988; Stokmans, 1999; Kraaykamp and Dijkstra, 1999).4
Fewer in number are studies which adopt a historical perspective
on the develop- ment of the literary field in Western Europe. As
yet literary historians have sporadi- cally undertaken that task.
Several factors appear to prevent. them from putting this research
on their agenda. In a general way, literary historians professional
orienta- tion accounts for their lack of production of relational
studies in a historical per- spective. Since the start of their
professionalisation, in the last quarter of the nine- teenth
century, historians of literature have concentrated on writers and
their works. They see the dissemination of humanism and cultural
tradition. as their primary goal, (cf. Laan, 1997). Despite debates
between adherents of different approaches in his- toriography and
literary analysis, literary historians have been less inclined to
inquire into the assumptions and premises underlying their
literary-critical involvement in symbolic production. In
interpreting, evaluating and ranking literary works, they practice
at an object level what, in an empirical-theoretical perspective,
they are sup- posed to analyze at a meta-level. In preferring the
role of agent of symbolic produc- tion to that of analist of this
process, their reflection on principles underlying a rela- tional
mode of analysis is almost nil. Departments of literature remained
fairly closed to developments in other disciplines.5 This explains
how an essentialist mode of thought could be transmitted from
generation to generation and prevail until today. It leaves most
historians of literature ill-equipped to take account of the
social, cultural, economic and technological conditions that affect
the material and symbolic production of reading materials and their
consumption. By the way they define their profession, literary
historians tend to overvalue the reliability and valid- ity of
their views on the nature of literary works and to undervalue the
normative sta- tus of their theoretical claims. However, critique
on these points should not detract from the fact that these agents
attribution of properties and values to literary works proves to be
socially effective since other agents in the field, including
non-profes- sional readers - through schooling and literature
education - reproduce these nor- mative views.
The brief overview of publications on the contemporary literary
field might con- vey the impression that the empirical theory of
the literary field is ahistorical. Such an impression would be
incorrect, as the empirical sociology of the cultural field is
premised on the belief: no sociology without history, no history
without sociology. The dynamic view of the field, and the key role
reserved in the analysis for concepts such as trajectory, and
positition-taking - each presupposing a history - are
4 From this enumeration were excluded studies aimed at
interpreting a single literary work as an exem- plary
position-taking by its author. We return to this below in briefly
discussing Bourdieu (1992). 5 Graff (1987) argues that literature
departments are compartmentalized by historical and generic top-
ics, each of which is the responsibility of a faculty member; new
topics are covered by a new faculty. Changes in the university job
market since the early 198Os, long before Graffs publication
appeared, force graduates from Departments of English to search for
new outlets.
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336 K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
incompatible with such an a-historical idea. Studies of the
field of art are bound to fail if they neglect its history, and the
evolution of symbolic power relations. Yet, studies in a historical
perspective are rather scarce. In the mid-1960s, Bourdieu paid
attention to historical aspects, e.g., to the issue of how the
cultural and literary field came into existence (Bourdieu, 1966,
1971). During the 1970s a number of researchers started to develop
an institutional perspective on the literary field in
nineteenth-century France (Bourdieu, 1992; Dubois, 1978; Ponton,
1975). Bour- dieus articles on this topic were collected in
Bourdieu (1992).
Although of major interest heuristically, most of these studies
fall short of hypoth- esis testing. This also holds for Bourdieu
(1992). To our mind, the first part of the book (1992: 17-165), on
Flauberts novel Lkducation sentimentale, is biased by a hermeneutic
presumption that the universe of the novel can be dealt with as if
it were the universe in which Flaubert lived, and that Flaubert, as
an institutional sociologist of art avant-la-lettre, manages to
entertain a relationship - albeit a negative one - with the
totality of the literary universe in which he is inscribed. He
functions in it and, at the same time, he takes into account all of
its contradictions, difficulties and problems (1992: 145). This
entails unjustifiable shifts in research perspective, from a
meta-level position to the object-level of subjective
interpretation. This hermeneu- tic overtone may at the same time
explain the wide acclaim this book received from humanistic
scholars.
We do not wish to imply by this critique that literary works
have to be excluded from relational analysis. For their inclusion,
however, another approach is needed which raises questions
radically different from those of hermeneuticians. The inter-
pretation of a work by critics or writers is first of all just an
interpretative viewpoint. Further questions must then be raised in
relation to symbolic production: to what extent this viewpoint
plays a role in the process of consensus formation; whether or not
it shapes the viewpoints of other agents and of common readers,
etc. Data are needed on material and symbolic production, not only
on the material conditions of the social environment but also on
the historically specific, institutional settings in which new
ideas are produced and disseminated. Instead of merely focusing on
the relative autonomy of the literary field, greater attention must
be paid to the ways in which the literary field is embedded in the
cultural field and is connected with social structure. These data
will have to be developed with the help of sophisticated rela-
tional research methods. Mohr (1998) provides an overview of
research in which institutional (instead of individual) meanings
(of texts, statements and cultural prac- tices) are analyzed with
the help of structural-interpretative approaches. Thereby the focus
is no longer on the content per se of statements, since that can be
regarded as arbitrary. The investigation aims at identifying
structural principles underlying the organisation of relational
patterns in a complex. Mohr mentions various quantitative
procedures permitting the reduction of the complexity of meanings
to more simple structural principles. In his editorial for a recent
special issue on Relational analysis and institutional meanings
(Poetics 28/2-3), Mohr (2000a: 58) states as goal of relational
analysis (1) to map out the pattern of relations which link
cultural ele- ments together as either similar or different and,
(2) to analyze the resulting pattern in such a way as to be able to
discern the deeper organizing principles that generate
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K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 337
meaning structures. (Th e six papers included in that special
issue illustrate this style of research,) Mohr (2000b) argues that
even though Bourdieu counts among the most eloquent theoretical
advocates of the duality of meaning and practice, his research
practices often suppose the existence of linear relationships
between depen- dent and independent variables and, therefore, are
far less relational than his theoret- ical statements would seem to
suggest.
With regard to the institutionally oriented historians who focus
on the nineteenth- century literary field, one can agree with
Bourdieu and his collaborators, that in the second half of the
nineteenth century a relatively autonomous (modern) literary field
came into existence. However, two qualifications must be taken into
account in endorsing this conclusion. First, the analysis of the
interactions in this field has to be improved and further evidence
should be obtained. Second, although arguments about the alleged
autonomy of the work may have been forceful enough to produce a new
view on the nature of literature, for sociologists of literature
they can never excuse abandoning principles of relational analysis
and endorsing the far-reaching conclusion that the literary field
itself would have become autonomous: it never was, and is unlikely
to ever become, autonomous. For literary historians this obser-
vation opens wide research perspectives.
Without explicitly disputing the suggestion of growing autonomy
in the nine- teenth century, Viala (1985) appears to take exception
to this privilege of the nine- teenth-century literary field. (See
also Viala and Saint-Jacques, 1994; Viala, 1997.) In his study of
seventeenth-century literary institutions, also in France, Viala
docu- ments the birth of modern authorship in that century by
paying close attention to the role of institutions in the
production, distribution and evaluation of literature. He argues
that membership of literary or cultural academies, clientelism,
patronage, and the response of the elite audience to literary
works, in spite of condemnation of this by academic judges,
affected the status of writers in this stratified and centralized
nation-state.
Earlier studies by Williams (1958, 1961) - although not phrased
in field-theoreti- cal terms - cover related issues (regarding
writers recruitment and status, and the role of education,
literacy, the popular press, and standard English) which are rele-
vant to the analysis of how a common cultural and literary field
emerged in England. In early eighteenth-century England, Grub
Street constituted the first modem community of interest of a large
class of hacks and enterprising publishers (Rogers, 1972). In the
emerging discipline of book history, several studies, such as those
by Altick (1963), Eisenstein (1983) and Keman (1989), provide a
welcome counterbal- ance against reductionist views current in
literary histories. An excellent study of changes in the cultural
field in Western Europe between the sixteenth and the nine- teenth
century is given in Wuthnow (1989). It focuses on the complex
relationship between ideology and social structure in the
Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. That the
literary field holds only a marginal place in this book should not
prevent students of the literary field from using its rich
conceptual frame- work (see, e.g., the brief overview in Wuthnow,
1989: 537-558). In analyzing what he calls the multifactoral or
conjunctoral conditions under which specific episodes of cultural
innovation have (...) arisen (1989: 577), one has to pay special
attention
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338 K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
to the specific institutional contexts in which ideologies were
produced, dissemi- nated, and authorized, since these contexts
provide the critical mediating connection between shifts in
environmental conditions and changes in ideology(1989: 546).
Compared to the nation-states France and England,
eighteenth-century Germany was a concept rather than an entity, as
it consisted of a great number of kingdoms and city-states, each
driven by its own considerations of political and cultural
identity. But, as in France and Britain, the existence of one
language was a unifying factor. Schmidts study Die
Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert
(Schmidt, 1989) discusses the Ausdifferenzierung and
Autonomisierung of the literary system in eighteenth-century
Germany from a perspective that attempts to connect Luhmanns system
theory with radical constructivism. In the second half of the
eighteenth century, Schmidt argues, Germany was caught up in a
historical transition from pre-modem to modem literature. In
addition to the emer- gence of economic, political, scientific and
educational systems, Germany saw the birth of a literary system (as
a subsystem of the arts system) in which various agents
(producers-authors, mediators-magazine editors, recipients-critics)
performed spe- cific roles which were recognized on all sides as
being legitimate.
One may wonder whether, and to what extent, a system-theoretical
approach is similar to and compatible with field theory. In a panel
discussion including Bourdieu and Schmidt as participants, closing
the 1989 IGEL conference, Schmidt spoke of a close relationship
between system and field, while Bourdieu distanced himself from the
systems approach (Bourdieu et al., 1992: 432-439; see also Schmidt,
1997). The main reasons Bourdieu adduced were the organistic
philosophy of soci- ety underlying the systems approach and the
priority given to the development of static theoretical and
methodological frameworks over empirical hypotheses testing. Unlike
field theory, the organistic philosophy precludes system
theoreticians, according to Bourdieu, from taking account of the
part played by chance, by inter- est, by struggles, by the plays of
power, violence, capital (ibid., 437). So far, no empirical
analyses phrased in both systems-theoretical and field-theorical
terms can be compared with each other, as systems theoreticians are
reluctant to develop empirical models and put these to the test in
empirical research (cf. van Rees, 1997; Verdaasdonk, 1997).
2. Conceptions of literature and their impact in the literary
field
What unites the authors included in this issue is, first of all,
a common object of research, that is, the development of the
literary field in Western Europe during the eighteenth century.
Three authors (De Kruif, Johannes and Salman) share a common focus
on the Dutch literary field at the time of the Republic, and they
report on research developed in the framework of one and the same
research program, Con- ceptions of literature and their impact in
the literary field.6 One of the aims of this
6 This program, consisting of sixteen postdoc and graduate
projects, is funded since 1994 by the Dutch Science Foundation
(NWO) and coordinated by the present guest-editors (cf. Van Rees
and Dorleijn
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K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 339
program is to inquire into the conditions underlying the
emergence of specialized institutions leading gradually to the
formation of the literary field and to answer the related question
of how views on the nature of literature have changed over time and
have affected the operation of literary institutions.
To introduce these papers, we believe that it would be useful to
comment briefly on two notions which are central to the program and
relevant to this issue: institu- tional context and conception of
literature, both in their relationship to the analysis of the
literary field. Heuristically, Vialas (1985) and Bourdieus (1992)
lines of rea- soning and conclusions are of interest to historical
research on other countries. But, as it appears from the articles
in this issue, results obtained in research on one nation-state
cannot easily be transposed to another. The participants in the
program have become aware that findings about the twentieth-century
literary field cannot be projected easily onto historical periods,
since the institutional context from which lit- erature derives its
meaning undergoes continuous changes over time. Features that are
held to be characteristic of the French literary field in the era
of print revolution need not be similar in England or Germany, let
alone the Dutch Republic. Differ- ences in structure from one
society to another prevent one from concluding that the production
and consumption of cultural goods such as books develop at a
similar pace in neighboring countries (not to mention in different
continents). Not only does the pace at which ideas and
organisations from one country are assimilated (and sub- sequently
transformed) in other countries vary; but the way in which a
cultural field is embedded in the field of power and in that of
class relations (Bourdieu, 1983: 319ff.) also varies depending on
the distribution of power and the organisation of class relations
in a nation-state. While political censorship severely constrains
pub- lishers freedom in one country (e.g., France), it may give a
boost to publishing in neighboring countries (Switzerland, the
Dutch Republic) (cf. Darnton and Roche, 1989). Constraints on the
freedom of the press, if only by taxes on newspapers, pre- vent the
rapid spread of reading habits which became possible in the course
of the nineteenth century. This invalidates expectations of linear
growth.
Likewise, the number of inhabitants in a language area is of
fundamental impor- tance to the viability of magazines as new
outlets for writers and critics and as new means of acculturation
for potential buyers, as Johannes contribution shows with regard to
the Dutch market. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, some
125 years after the shift from script to print, books were still an
uncommon cultural good. Book-historical studies refute the
assumption that after about 1500 Western Euro- pean countries
already became, and remained, a print society in which printed
mate- rials pervaded social life. Referring to these studies, Keman
argues that it was not until about 1700 that printing began to
affect the structure of social life at every level (1989: 48). Data
on book and magazine production in England, France and
1993; Dorleijn and van Rees, 1999). Most of the researchers who
implement the program are concerned with a time period before the
20th century, somewhere between the beginning of our em and 1900.
Six projects focus on countries other than the Netherlands: France,
England, Russia, Poland, India and Ancient Rome. Discussions among
participants enhance their awareness of structural differences
between one society and another, between one period and
another.
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340 K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
Germany provide sufficient ground for the assumption that the
eighteenth century marks a period of important increase in book and
magazine production, even though the major breakthrough dates from
the nineteenth century. The authors included here are eager to
improve our understanding of this expansion of the book trade. With
regard to the increase in literacy, which is ususally presented as
a direct consequence of the print revolution, they share an
empirically based skepticism about widespread book-historical ideas
such as the reader revolution(cf. Engelsing, 1974).
As indicated, in analyzing the literary or cultural field in a
relational perspective, one has to take note of the impact of
conceptions of literature or culture applied by members of
institutions and consumers alike. A conception of literature (CL)
may be defined as set of mostly normative ideas and arguments on
the nature and func- tion of literature, on literary techniques and
their alleged effects on readers. These ideas serve, in the first
place, to dress the symbolic agents discourse on the allegedly
intrinsic properties of literary works. The notion of CL is mostly
used in literary studies to refer to poetical treatises (Aristotles
Poetics; Horaces Epistulu ad Phones, Sydneys Defense of Poetry),
programmatic manifestos (by an author, a group of writers, or a
critic) and the like. The doctrine of lart pour Zart, which holds a
central place in Bourdieus (1992) analysis, is an example of an
influential nineteenth-century conception of literature. Over time,
poetical treatises helped to shape the thought style of a period
and had a strong effect on the classification and ranking of
literary works, and on the assignment of the properties to which
literary works are believed to owe their status. It is, therefore,
understood that literary schol- ars ought to pay these treatises
special attention. Because of these treatises norma- tive nature,
this research will benefit from dealing with them as literary
ideologies rather than as theories containing the truth in
litteris.
A considerable advance could also be made by taking into account
the use of CLs by other actors in the literary field. In addition
to writers and critics, agents such as publishers, booksellers,
teachers, members of literary societies, and magazine editors draw
on CLs to verbalize their decisions and to justify their actions,
for example, when they classify new or existent reading materials,
recommend these to groups of users, and suggest specific ways of
dealing with these works. True, their ideas may be less elaborate
than those of writers and critics. Even when they seem directly
inspired by the latters claims, they may be tinged by principles of
action and appre- ciation that are peculiar to the institutional
context in which these agents operate. As members of a particular
institution (school, bookshop, public library, publishing house),
they have practical knowledge of how their instititution is
positioned in the field, and how its operation is constrained by
its relationship with other institutions.
By identifying agents other than writers and critics as users of
CLs, we must not be understood to mean that these actors are
consulting a copy of the contemporary dominant treatise on
literature to see whether their plans comply with its norms. CLs
are not these actors basis for grounded decisions. However, we
contend that their implicit knowledge of symbolic production,
including the role played by CLs, is an important dimension of
their practice, and taking it into account advances institu- tional
analysis of the literary field. The same goes for critics and other
agents of symbolic action: knowledge of the process of material
production, even though it is
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K. van Rees, G J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 341
not made explicit by them, is a consequential dimension of their
practice. For exam- ple, a reviewers decision on whether or not to
pay attention to a new title involves the reviewers awareness that
the author belongs to a prestigious publishing house and that
colleagues in top-periodicals paid attention to a previous title by
the same author.
Thus, for contemporary and historical publishers, agents of
material production, CLs may play a role in deciding whether or not
to start a new book genre or expand the function of an existing
one, as appears from Benedicts paper on literary antholo- gies.
Irrespective of the period, estimates of a products profitability
are shown to be made in light of publishers basic knowledge of the
field, of the position of com- petitors, of hunches about which
literary experiences appear to be preferred by con- sumers. In
modern times, considerations may be also based on knowledge of
former sales, critical response to previous publications either in
book form or in literary magazines, positions taken by writers, how
fashionable a particular genre is, and how the themes fit in the
spectrum of readers interests. Apart from former sales, all these
considerations are aspects of symbolic production and directly
related to the use of CLs. As new titles are brought on the market,
publishers draw on well-known ideas from current CLs about the
educational function of literature; their knowledge of the cultural
field, for example, of how it is related to other fields (e.g.,
education, religion), may be applied in formulating advertisements,
a means of communication used already in the eighteenth century to
position titles as part of the book supply and bring them to the
attention of potential book buyers, as Salman shows in his con-
tribution. Clearly, practices of this kind, which one may tend to
associate mainly with the modern literary field, already occurred
in the eighteenth century.
Editors of literary magazines and, more recently, of a
newspapers book section have recourse to their knowledge of the
writers market, including the competition among contemporary
conceptions of literature, when deciding whether or not to pay
attention to a new title, e.g., by publishing poems, an essay or
story in the magazine; in the case of the newspaper, by having the
book reviewed or by arranging an inter- view with its author. When
awarding a literary prize or a stipend to a literary author,
members of the jury or of the board of the endowment fund consider
a variety of similar factors which have bearing on the nominees
careers, that is, not only the positions they take but also the
response of other agents in the field towards them, even readers
response. Economically, these kinds of decisions are usually less
con- sequential than those of a publisher who brings out a number
of titles yearly, a large percentage of which do not attract
numerous readers.
To better understand processes going on in the literary field,
an approach is needed which integrates institutional analysis with
an examination of how CLs are developed and applied. Only such an
integrated approach permits clarification of how literary
institutions think, that is, how their operation determines the
cate- gories chosen by members of a society in order to classify
and deal with cultural products. In studying the literary field of
a given era and society, this implies answering questions such as
the following: Which conceptions of literature have been developed?
Which ones appear to dominate the others? What consequences does
this domination have for book production and consumption? How do
members
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342 K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
of various institutions use them? Thus, one can begin to explain
how a framework of literary thought, peculiar to the relevant set
of institutions, constructs the literary thought styles which
affect that literary worlds experiences (cf. Douglas, 1986:
43).
3. The eighteenth-century literary field
The historical research that was briefly discussed in the
foregoing sections sug- gests that, during the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth century, a literary field came into
existence in various countries in Western Europe. The scheme of the
eigh- teenth-century literary field, shown in Fig. 2, draws heavily
on the analogy with Fig. 1. With regard to most slots we only have
scanty knowledge. The contributions included here aim at improving
(our view of) this map so as to make it better fit
eighteenth-century reality. An important difference with the
twentieth-century liter- ary field must be considered at the
outset. In the premodem era, the term literature meant something
quite different from what it means in the modem period. Jn refer-
ring to the contemporary configuration of institutions and agents
involved in the pro- duction of reading materials in terms of the
literary field, one must be aware that only gradually did
literature, literary and cognate terms become more restricted in
sense and receive the meaning commonly attached to them today. In
the eighteenth century, a literate and cultured person was someone
who knew a lot about the arts and literature; the latter term
referred to a broad range of subjects on which books had been
published, including a growing range of titles for which we still
use the term. As a matter of course, the institutional setting of
the literary field is constantly changing. In the eighteenth
century, producers of reading materials combined the functions of
publisher, printer, bookseller. As appears from Johannes
contribution, it took a long time for Dutch magazines to become
commercially viable. As review- ing in newspapers did not start
until the late nineteenth century, literary critics were dependent
on other outlets, notably magazines, to publish their reviews. New
play- ers (e.g., authors, publishers or critics) tried to acquire
status; they grew in number as book buying became less confined to
the elite. For the Netherlands at least, this appears to have been
the case only in the course of the nineteenth century and hardly at
all in the eighteenth century. The structure of the field is
permanently affected by field-external but related factors of
various nature: political (stamp act), ideological (religion),
technical (power press, rotary press), economical (advertising
industrial products), social (education promoting literacy), and
demographic.
As indicated, three contributions by participants in the Dutch
program cover roughly the same period (the second half of the
eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century)
and the same area (The Netherlands). They study the book trade,
especially the publisher as an institution, and use qualitative and
quantitative data on book (or magazine) production, distribution
and reading in order to answer specific research questions. Though
not a part of the program, another invited contribution on literary
anthologies (Benedict) is also related in period and in approach.
Finally, the author of Die Selbstorganisation des Sozialsystems
Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert, Schmidt, considers the constructivist
position in historiography.
-
K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 343
3
2
READING PUBLIC j (.
L
Fig. 2. Diagram of the eighteenth-century literary field (l),
embedded in the cultural field (2) including art, religion, etc.
which is itself situated within social structure (3).
Market size appeared to have been an obstacle for the
development of Dutch cul- ture in general during the second half of
the eighteenth and the first half of the nine- teenth century.
Here, expansion and growth, specialisation, differentiation and
autonomization of the different cultural fields lagged behind other
European coun- tries with a larger language area (England, France,
Germany). Johannes paper focuses on a number of limitations on the
formation of cultural infrastructures set by the restrictions
imposed by a minor linguistic community. Many attempts were made to
found specialist periodicals, and in several domains there were
also endeavors to establish magazines aiming at a general audience,
however, without much success. It
-
344 K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
was not until 1850 that several competing journals - both
specialised and general - succeeded in positioning themselves on
the market. For the major language areas, this stage had been
reached as early as 1775. It is argued that socio-economical con-
straints connected with the small size of the country can explain
the lag of the mod- ernization process in the Netherlands.
Both de Kruif and Benedict correct unwarranted socio-cultural
claims, like Engelsings on the reading revolution, prodding us into
more precise empirical research. During the second half of the
eighteenth century, title production and genre differentiation
increased. To explain these changes in supply, researchers make an
untested assumption of an increasing consumer demand, due to a
developing middle class. Of course, much depends on how middle
class is operationalized; in much bookhistorical research this
remains under-specified. De Kruif uses data gathered from probate
inventories and her sample consists of five burial classes,
according to the burial impost payed by each testator. She shows
that bookhistorical assumptions are not well founded. One cannot
conclude from an increase in production that the market of buyers
was also growing. In the Dutch case, stagnation in demand, instead
of increase, appears to be the explanatory factor. Another
correction concerns the middle class thesis; contrary to
expectations, the increase in book possession in the first half of
the eighteenth century appears to be due to lower classes, who
bought religious books (bibles, hymn and church books), and to the
elite, that is, in de Kruifs case, the two highest burial classes.
What is more, de Kruifs research qual- ifies the assumedly tight
relationship between socio-economic status and book pos- session.
In the case studied, religious persuasion appears to be a more
relevant vari- able than socio-economic status. Possession of new
book genres such as travel stories and novels, usually associated
with middle class, does not manifest a strong link with this class
in the Hague, that is, people belonging to burial classes 3 and 4:
these genres were nearly exclusively in the possession of the
elite.
Just like today, eighteenth-century publishers and booksellers
pursued economic profit and worked out all kinds of schemes to
reach their targets: all presses had to be kept going. As De Kruif
shows, one of those strategies was differentiation of sup- ply. A
more specific publisher strategy, examined by Benedict, consisted
of the exploration and development of a relatively new book genre,
the literary anthology. A large set of early modem anthologies is
analyzed with special regard to their pro- duction, packaging,
format and contents. It is hypothesized that through the strategic
use of this book genre publishers managed not only to widen the
circle of readers, and to change their views of literature and
their experiences with literature, but also to entice readers into
allowing them to assume the role of expert in aesthetic
matters.
We believe that these claims about aesthetic expertise, by
publishers like Lintot, Tonson or Dodsley or by author-critics like
Pope or Johnson, derive from a concep- tion of literature that, in
England, was relatively new for its time; perhaps less so in
France. Regardless, most of the claims in question appear to be
ideological and rhetorical, in the sense that one is supposed to
take for granted the tacit premises and normative assumptions about
the nature of an artefact (e.g., the nature of poetry, its beauty,
its positive effect on consumers who are qualified to enjoy its
qualities). In hindsight, the agents mentioned have been successful
in that they managed to
-
K. van Rees, G.J. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348 345
gradually acquire enough authority to make those claims. And it
is plausible to assume that, through these claims, a new cultural
reality was created in eighteenth- century England that began to
affect the mindset of a growing cultural elite. By the way
publishers exploited the genre of the literary anthology, they
probably attempted to stimulate new attitudes and new beliefs among
their potential book buyers. In try- ing to allure potential buyers
to become actual buyers, they flattered them in various ways, e.g.,
by arguing that their books would provide them with the means of
enhancing their cultural status. In terms of contemporary poetical
treatises, readers were supposed to pursue
pleasure-cum-instruction. The literary anthology of the day also
invited readers to pursue cultural status: that of belonging to an
elite that is knowledgeable in litteris, acquainted with reading of
quality and aesthetic beauty, which in certain circles was becoming
a value in itself.
Evidence for these claims about the positive effect of the
reading of literary works is abundantly available, for example, in
literary anthologies. It appears more difficult to empirically show
the development of new attitudes among readers, let alone changes
in reading behavior as a consequence of the status-raising effect
of the read- ing of literature. Meanwhile, in the field, symbolic
producers were competing for the authority to define good
literature, the meaning of aesthetic, and its benefits. The
literary anthology appeared to be an adequate carrier of a new
formula. Again, the increase in the number of anthologies does not
in itself warrant coming to the con- clusion that this genre
significantly inreased the number of actual readers in eigh-
teenth-century England. Benedicts paper shows that publishers and
booksellers car- ried out niche marketing activities with the
intention of commercializing reading behavior and expanding their
market. What researchers need to obtain now are reli- able data
which give evidence of attitudinal and behavioral changes among
readers.
Benedicts paper refers to a specific genre or rather format,
aimed at a general, supposedly elite readership. Salmans
contribution deals with a specific audience segment, children,
directed at by publishers and booksellers. In their marketing
strategies (advertisement appears to have been an important tool),
publishers were driven by a mix of commercial interests and
ideological motives. Comparative observations are made about
developments in Germany - an apparently larger lan- guage area with
a broader market. However, it appears that in spite of the small
market, Dutch publishers were able to produce a substantial number
of childrens books.
The production and revitalization of the literary anthology in
eighteenth-century England was closely connected to publishers
considerations about creating an audi- ence. Constraints on
consumption - for example, a restricted absolute amount of
potential consumers in the Netherlands until 1850 - affect
conditions of production. The gradual emergence of the premodem
literary field in the eighteenth century is connected with the
development of both new CLs and new organisations of produc- tion
and distribution. The spread of new ideas implying, for instance,
the gradual revision of the neo-classical genre hierarchy and an
upgrading of the novel, depends not only on the existence of a
substratum of material production, that is, publishers and printers
producing, among other things, an increasing number of novels, but
also on a growing audience which endorses these ideas and is
willing to spend time on
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346 K. van Rees, GJ. Dorleijn I Poetics 28 (2001) 331-348
reading these new products. The papers published in this issue
may illustrate impor- tant tenets like the interdependence of
cultural production and consumption, and the extent to which
cultural production and consumption are conditioned by socio-eco-
nomic, political and religious factors. In many
cultural-sociological studies, produc- tion and consumption are
dealt with separately. Studies on material and symbolic production
tend to focus exclusively on production whereas those on
consumption and cultural participation focus mainly on consumption.
As a matter of fact, produc- tion and consumption should be
considered as the two faces of the same coin.
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