The eighteenth-century literary field in Western Europe. The interdependence of material and symbolic production and consumption

The paper of this special issue are introduced as instances of a field-theo retic approach as articulated initially in Bourdieu's institutional analysi s of the literary field. This approach is presented as a sound alternative to traditional literary history and its insufficiently relational view of h istoriography and of the cultural object. In addition, it is situated criti cally with respect to book history and previous institutional analyses in a historical perspective. It focuses on the development of a literary field in eighteenth century Western Europe, at a time when the term 'literature' meant something quite different from what it means nowadays. In the cultura l-sociological perspective advocated here, one must take account of the int erdependency of material and symbolic production and consumption. Therefore , an approach is needed which integrates institutional analysis with an exa mination of the impact of conceptions of literature, that is, sets of norma tive ideas on the nature and function of literature. These conceptions affe ct the practices of all agents in the field, irrespective of whether they f ocus on symbolic or material production, or even on consumption. (c) 2001 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.