Abstract
In the book the author focuses on two important contemporary context-oriented approaches to literature: the theory of the literary field, developed by Pierre Bourdieu, and cultural materialism, first formulated by Raymond Williams and further elaborated by Alan Sinfield and Jonathan Dollimore. He interprets these two theories as basic, mutually complementary models: the theory of the literary field presupposes the existence of a (semi-)autonomous literary micro-world, whereas cultural materialism stresses the full integration of the literary text into the social context.
First, the author concentrates on Bourdieu's theory of the literary field and on contemporary postbourdieusian approaches (those of Alain Viala, Anna Boschetti, Jacques Dubois, Gisèle Sapiro, Pascale Casanova, Bernard Lahire, Jérôme Meizoz and Geoffroy de Lagasnerie); he uses these approaches for a critique of the field theory from the inner perspective. Then he focuses on cultural materialism, sketching the fundamental notions of Raymond Williams's theory of culture and literature and then moving on to Williams's most important successor, Alan Sinfield.
With Sinfield the problem of mediation is re-oriented towards sexual dissidence and social difference, and the result is a remarkable variant of queer literary studies. In the conclusion the author returns to key problems of mediation between the literary text and social context by re-examining and comparing both theories, with special emphasis on problems of historicity, singularity, text as an event, production and reception, the question of form, and self-reflexivity of research.