Literature and Society

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-VIII

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Charles I. Glicksberg

      Pages 1-15

3. Asocial Literature

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17

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   2. Expressionism and the Aesthetics of the Absurd

      1. The Asocial Writer

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 19-30

      2. A Trinity of the Absurd

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 31-45

   3. The Revolt Against Society: Anarchism, Alienation, the Beat Ethic and Madness

      1. The Individual Versus Society

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 46-56

      2. Revolt and Madness

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 57-71

4. The Literature of Social Criticism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 73-73

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   2. The Voice of Social Criticism

      1. The Problem of Definition

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 75-82

      2. Shaw the Social Prophet

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 83-92

      3. The Social Conscience of the Thirties

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 93-105

      4. The Social Criticism of John Dos Passos

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 106-117

      5. The Moral Commitment of John Steinbeck

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 118-124

      6. The Socioeconomic Motif in the Literature of the Angry Young Men

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 125-138

   3. The Literature of Social Protest

      1. The Call of Conscience

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 139-147

      2. The Nemesis of War

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 148-155

      3. The Atomic Holocaust

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 156-167

      4. The Kingdom of Nightmare and Death

         • Charles I. Glicksberg

         Pages 168-188

5. The Literature of Social Commitment

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 189-189

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   2. The Politics of the Writer

      • Charles I. Glicksberg

      Pages 191-197

1. Prolegomena The purpose of this book is to examine anew and from a number of different perspectives the highly complex and controversial relation between literature and society. This is not meant to be a study in sociology or political science; the analysis of literature - its structure, content, function, and effect - is our primary concern. What we shall try to find out is how the imaginative work is rooted in and grows out of the parent social body, to what extent it is influenced in subject matter as well as form and technique by the domi­ nant climate of ideas in a given historical period, and to what degree and in what manner literature "influences" the society to which it is addressed. The stream of literary influence is of course difficult to trace to its putative source, for here we are not dealing, as in science, with isolated physical phenomena which can be fitted precisely within some cause-and-effect pat­ tern. The relationship between literature and society is far more subtle and complex than social scientists or cultural critics commonly assume.

• Bertolt Brecht
• English literature
• George Bernard Shaw
• Holocaust
• Shoah
• evolution
• individual
• literature
• politics
• realism
• socialist realism
• literary diction

Policies and ethics