Bourdieu's Theory Of The Literary Field:a Hermeneutic Understanding Of Literature

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the literary field as a social approach for literary criticism and study,uncovers the socio-historical conditions of literary production and reception,and sets the rules for a scientific analysis of literature.The previous studies on the theory of the literary field mainly focus on the genesis and logics of the literary field,literary production and reception,the essence of literature and its symbolic function.While the underlying presupposition of the theory,that is,the social analysis of literature would not reduce nor destroy the literary experience,has been rarely studied.The thesis takes Gadamer's Hermeneutics as approach to analyze the connotation of the theory of the literary field,by means of which to discuss the reasonability of its presupposition and to define Bourdieu's understanding of literature.Based on the theoretical construction of the literary field,Bourdieu analyzes the social conditions of literary production and reception.The thesis would discuss Bourdieu's understanding of the literary field,literary production and literary reception in the following three chapters.The first chapter probes into Bourdieu's relational understanding of the literary field.The literary field is a relational structure of relative autonomy,distinction principle and struggle logic.Being as a structural space where all the literary agents co-exist and interact with each other,the literary field implies a homologous relationship between the work of literature and the world,and thus is a relational hermeneutic play.The second chapter elaborates Bourdieu's historicized understanding of literary production.The struggle-based history of the literary field makes the essence of literature the product of historical extract and defines the literary field the true producer of the meaning and value of literary works.The historicization of literary production is the precondition of understanding and the history of literary production is modified and enriched by understanding,which makes literary production a historicized hermeneutic tradition.The third chapter analyzes Bourdieu's reflexive understanding of literary reception.Through a reflexive refusal of internal reading and external reading,Bourdieu claims that the literary reception of reflexivity requires the reconstruction of the necessity of author and work and the objectification of reader.Literary reception is of ontological significance on understanding the world and the self and is thus a reflexive hermeneutic understanding.Through the analysis of the theory of the literary field,the thesis draws a conclusion that Bourdieu's social analysis of literature uncovers the relational logics of the literary field,historical conditions of literary production,and reflexive requirements for literary reception.Through the reconstruction of the social reality on which literary production and reception depend,Bourdieu's theory of the literary field constructs the systems of intelligible relations capable of understanding and interpreting the experience of literature,and thus is a hermeneutic understanding of literature.