ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how a critical aesthetic theory that is neither socially idealistic nor politically pragmatic also provides a critique of various sociological accounts of art. In particular, the sociology of art and authorial reputation, new historicism, and cultural studies all have serious implications for the literary canon. By stressing what they take to be the ideological fallacies of aesthetic distinction, they threaten to subvert the very idea of a canon. The chapter focuses on how these sociological approaches dispense with the most critical attributes of art in modern society. Literary sociology perceives aesthetic value to be entirely constructed within a network of social, symbolic, and institutional legitimizations. Bourdieu's sociology of the cultural field examines the social context of artistic production and traces the reproduction of belief. The suspension of aesthetic evaluation in new historicism, its reluctance to acknowledge what distinguishes artworks from other texts, is due to the denial of aesthetic autonomy.
