ABSTRACT
This chapter works on the history of sociology, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology, Lepenies points to the lack of attention to the role of fiction as an important source of influence in the development of sociology. It presents a discussion of Viola Klein's first, now forgotten, doctoral thesis on the literary style of the French novelist, Celine written at the University of Prague before her escape to Britain in 1938. Her thesis, written under the supervision of Karl Mannheim at the London School of Economics and published as The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology, is better known in the history of sociology. This thesis is now seen as one of the first attempts to apply Mannheim's conception of sociology of knowledge as a diagnostic tool in the analysis of a particular social issue in Klein's case, that of the position of women in society as a highly original critique of patriarchal constructions of knowledge.
