Bourdieu face à la littérature
I have used Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological approach as a critical tool for the study of literary texts. As a sociologist, Bourdieu is not satisfied with the notion that the literary text would be isolated from the world and considers the writer as a product of economic, social, religious or political circumstances that may be recovered through analysis. According to Bourdieu, the development of literature as an independent field goes hand in hand with the expansion of a liberal politics, a connection critics refuse to recognize as they will believe in the myth of inspired creation. Bourdieu retraces to the nineteenth century the moment when literature became independent and describes how twentieth-century literature is but a perpetuation of nineteenth-century literary myths. I also look at the ways the specialists of Flaubert responded to the publication of Les Regles de l’art as the book provoked heated debates when it was issued. I have especially examined the arguments of critics hostile to Bourdieu in order to demonstrate how such an emblematic figure as Flaubert embodies what is at stake when one questions the notion of literature. How can Bourdieu fit in literary studies? One has to be careful interpreting the title of Bourdieu’s book. Les Regles de l’art is no prescriptive book : Bourdieu is not the one who sets the rule nor does he suggest that there were no rules before the advent of the modern age. He is simply trying to show how, from the start of this period, the literary world is determined by specific social, political, economic and cultural conditions and questions the particular role played by the artist in this new state of things.