Flat characters are characterized by one or two traits; they can be summed up in a sentence. Round characters are complex and many-sided; they might require an essay for
full analysis. Round characters are complex and comprehensive; they might require an essay
for full analysis. They live by their very roundness, by the many points at which they touch life. A round character is usually more fully developed, challenging readers to
analyze the character’s motives and evaluate his or her actions.
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C. Sociology of Literature
Literature is a social condition, using as its medium language, a social creation. Such traditional literary devices as symbolism and metre are social in their very nature.
They are conventions and norms which could have arisen only in society. But, furthermore, literature ‘represents’ life, and life is, in large measure, a social reality, even
though the natural world and the inner or subjective world of the individual have also been objects of literary ‘imitation’. The author himself is a member of society, possessed
of a specific social status: he receives some degree of social recognition and reward; he addresses an audience, however hypothetical. Indeed, literature has usually arisen in close
connexion with particular social institutions; and in primitive society we may even be unable to distinguish poetry from ritual, magic, work, or play. Literature has also a social
function or ‘use’, which cannot be purely individual. Thus a large majority of the
19
Ibid, p.67
questions raised by literary study are, at least ultimately or by implication, social questions: questions of tradition and convention, norms and genres, symbols and myths.
20
The relation between literature and society is usually discussed by starting with the phrase, derived from De Bonald, that ‘Literature is an expression of society’. But
what does this axiom mean? If it assumes that literature, at any given time, mirrors the current social situation ‘correctly’, it is false; it is commonplace, trite, and vague if it
means only that literature depicts some aspects of social reality. To say that literature mirrors or expresses life is even more ambiguous. A writer inevitably expresses his
experience and total conception of life, but it would be manifestly untrue to say that he expresses the whole of life or even the whole of a given time completely and
exhaustively. It is a specific evaluative criterion to say that an author should express the life of his own time fully, that he should be ‘representative’ of his age and society.
21
The descriptive as distinctive relation admit of rather ready classification: First, there is sociology of the writer and the profession and institutions of literature, the whole
question of the economic basis of literary production, the social provenance and status of the writer, his social ideology, which may find expression in extra-literary
pronouncements and activities. Then there is the problem of the social content, the implications and social purpose the works of literature themselves. Lastly, there are the
problems of the audience and the actual social influence of literature. The question how far literature is actually determined by or dependent on its social setting, on social change
and development, is one which, in one way or another, will enter into all the three
20
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, 1956, Theory of Literature Britain: Harcourt, Brace World p. 94
21
Ibid, p.95
divisions of our problem: the sociology of the writer, the social content of the works themselves, and the influence of literature on society.
Actually what is meant by Sociology of literature? The writer below quotes what Cole and Lindemann described “The sociology of literature while in similar in ways to
the historical approach, is more specialized because it centers on the social environment of the work, the culture, politics, economics, customs, fashion and manners. To use this
approach we might consider either the ways the forces of society influence on writer or the ways these forces operate in the work clearly, literary works reflect or comment on
social reality the Utopian novel, for example can validly be approached sociologically and the understanding of most literary works could be enchanted by this approach
because the culture to which writers belong helps determining to the understanding of life and ever the language, they use to express their understanding knowledge of
contemporary economic and social theory is important for people who apply this approach understanding of how some works attempts to reflect or even reform their
society.
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D. Theory of George Lukacs
