LITERATURE, DEMOCRACY AND THE OBJECT

Abstract

Abstract The idea of “literary democracy” can be traced back to the early twentieth century, which this article does by looking initially at the work of Georg Lukács. His distinctly humanist view of literary democracy resonates with other key thinkers, including Erich Auerbach and Mikhail Bakhtin. But it is in the contemporary work of Jacques Rancière that an explicit engagement with this idea resurfaces. The task, then, becomes to trace the progression in thought...