A Study Of Literary Commitment Theory

This dissertation is a reflexation on the theory of literary commitment in response to the blind points and misconceptions of former researches, attempting to trace the theory of aesthetic form as mediation of literary commitment by referring to historic and cultural field and rethinking its importance and complexity. To achieve this purpose, three representative theorists in modern and contemporary western literary history, who have elaborated the problem of literary commitment, are chosen as analysis samples, namely, Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Ranciere.The first section deals with Sartre's theory of literary commitment as action. Sartre elaborated this point in his early work What Is Literature? In fact, Sartre had different explanation on his theory of literary commitment along his career. In his later stage, he said that commitment was to undertake the responsibility to totalization. It is not difficult to find that his theory of literary commitment turns to both generalization and nihilism. The basic reason for this swaying is that he didn't lay a solid foundation for the philosophical thought of totalization, which is the basis of the theory of commitment, and he was unable to solve the problem of how the integration of individual leaded to the total integration. However, he proposed some valuable insights such as the density of being, totalization literature, developing totalization, the Third, etc. in the process of constantly exploring and modifying his theory, which has greatly enriched the connotation of literary commitment theory.The second section focuses on Adorno's uncommitted commitment. Adorno insisted on the duality of artistic autonomy and sociality, arguing that the strong negation of art to society builds their connection. In his view, sociality was an inherent part of art and the autonomic artworks committed through a careful creation of form. In the process of argument, he put forward a new art imitation theory, transforming the conception of "autonomy" and "form" from metaphysical idealism aesthetical concepts to physical items, turning the liberation of form into a cipher communication of the liberation of society.The third section concentrates on Ranciere's distribution of the sensible. Ranciere was not satisfied with Adorno's art theory. He advocated for breaking the art boundary and introducing the life dimension, thus spurred a meta-politics:art intervened by redistributing the sensible. This thinking breaks the traditional conception that politics is external to art and opens a new space for art theory. Ranciere paid attention to the issue of distribution from a microscopic angle such as sensible, proposing the possibility of a new distribution politics:the distribution of the sensible.Despite from different cultures and fields, the three theorists commits to the belief of art commitment and resorts it respectively to action, criticism and sensible, each embarks from the previous place stopped, continuously enriching the theory of literary commitment.