ABSTRACT
In the present volume, the author carries out the program for a sociological approach to literature as it is developed in his theoretical writings in Volume 1: namely, the treatment of prominent literary documents from the past as primary materials for a historically based study of social realities. Interpreting literature in this fashion becomes a means of analyzing society. This is not to say that the esthetic core of a work of art can somehow be glimpsed from the outside, through an analysis of extraliterary factors that impinge on the work. On the contrary, we see that objective social realities are always deeply embedded in the creative transformation of even the most subjective of experiences, such as fear, guilt and emotions of intimacy. It is here, in this esthetic dimension, that social realities can be grasped.
