Andrew Milner - Sociology of Literature

Sociology of Literature

Milner’s first book, John Milton and the English Revolution, was an application of Goldmann’s 'genetic structuralist' sociology of literature to the political, philosophical and poetical writings of John Milton, the great poet of the English Revolution. It argued that the seventeenth-century revolutionary crisis had witnessed the creation and subsequent destruction of a rationalist world vision, which found political expression in the political practice of 'Independency'. A detailed analysis of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes interpreted the poems as articulating distinct and separate responses to the problem of defeat, whether actual or potential, and to the triumph of unreason over reason. Literature, Culture and Society was published in two editions, the first in 1996 and the second, very substantially revised, in 2005. Both develop a substantive account of the capitalist literary mode of production, focussing on technologies of mechanical reproduction and social relations of commodification. The differences between editions are evidence of Milner’s growing interest in comparative literature and science fiction studies. Two of the additional case-studies in the second edition reflect both interests, a third the latter alone.