The Historical Development of Sociology of Literature

The sociology of literature has been a marginal area in the discipline of sociology. Many scholars writing on the sociology of literature see the area as a sideline and produce only a single book or article on the subject. This has exacerbated the lack of structure in the development of the field. None of the 'founding fathers' of sociology produced a detailed study of literature, but they did develop ideas that were subsequently applied to literature by others. Although sociological approach to the study of literature has long and  distinguished history from Plato onwards, it has gained its special place in the history of critical theory in the late twentieth century in the hands of Lucien Goldman, Leo Lowenthal, Robert Escarpit, Alan Swingwood, Diana Laurenson, John Hall and the several social thinkers and critics. In order to understand the development of the sociological approach to the study of literature, it is necessary to see the historical development of this approach through the contribution of the social critics and scholars. In this article an attempt has been made to focus the relationship between sociology and literature and the major contributors who tried to develop the sociological approach to the study of literature.