International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2024

The Evolution of French Sociological Criticism

(Abstract)

Wu Yuetian

From Madame de Staël’s “The Influence of Literature upon Society” to Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, and from Lafargue’s Marxist criticism to Goldmann’s genetic structuralism, French sociological criticism has a long and enduring history. In the course of its evolution, it has interacted and intermingled with Marxist criticism, structuralist criticism and proletarian literary criticism, producing such up-to-date treatises as “d’un réalisme sans rivages,” theory of literary production, and structuralist Marxism, thus contributing to the development of Western Marxism, enlarging the scope of sociological criticism, and forming a prosperous scene of numerous famous writers and continuous innovation.