ABSTRACT
The sociological interpretation of literature is not a favorite son of organized social science. Since the emancipation of the study of literature from the rigid research dicta and historically cogent laws of philology, almost everybody with a fair access to reading and writing feels entitled to offer historical, aesthetic, and sociological criticism and generalization. The academic disciplines which have been traditionally charged with the history and analysis of literature have been caught unaware by the impact of mass literature, the best seller, the popular magazine, the comics and the like, and they have maintained an attitude of haughty indifference to the lower depths of imagination in print. A field and a challenge have thus been left open and the sociologist will have to do something about them. 1
