The study of the formation of the 18th Century literary public sphere provides a comprehensive perspective for those who want to understand the process of the development of modern European civilization. This comprehensive perspective is comprised of two aspects, namely, the macro aspect of society and the micro aspect of individual books. The focus of the formation of the literary public sphere is on the textual production of books, and their social dissemination. We can have a clear picture of the process of the textual production of books in the interaction among the authors, the books and readers. We can define the social significance of the dissemination of books in the interaction among books, market and society. Against the historic background of the application of printing technology, the establishment of copyright system and the formation of book market, the writing process of authors commenced to define styles and contents of their books from the actual demands of reading market and social reading expectations. The profiting business of the booksellers could prod authors to undertake the writing in line with the reading expectations of readers through the means of market adjustment. The actual reading consumption of readers would pass the direct judgment on the concerned efforts of readers and booksellers. The interaction among authors, booksellers and readers serves to define their own identity and exerts influence on each other. Ultimately, their efforts start with the pursuit of their individual subjectivity, and end with the combined striving for the social commonality, which jointly usher in the formation of the literary public sphere. The theory of public sphere of Habermas is of great inspiration for humanistic and social sciences studies, which has become the important analytical perspective adopted frequently by scholars all around the world. Although Habermas has put forward the concept of ″literary public sphere″ in his The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he did not present a convincing argumentation for the nature of the literary public sphere and the process of its formation. Henceforth, the creative aspect of this paper is to center on the textual production of books and their social dissemination, and to start with the construction of the self-identity of authors, booksellers and readers in the 18th Century in order to analyze the process of the formation of public consciousness of books, market and society. In the meanwhile, the paper is to choose the study of textual books as the entry point in order to present two analytical models, namely, the internal factor and the external factor of textual books of literary public sphere. The paper is also to display and represent the abstract process of the self-identification of the individual subjectivity and social commonality, two driving forces of the formation of literary public sphere through concrete social phenomena. The study of literary public sphere provides not only the mixed and shifting perspectives from macro and micro aspects, which might enable scholars to have an insight into the writing motives of the 18th Century authors, but also a model of new argumentation concerning the interaction between individual experiences and social consciousness. This study will enable us to understand how the sages and forerunners of the 18th Century managed to condense Zeitgeist into the textual books through the effort of summarization and converging, and to project the consciousness of political public sphere onto the real life through the reading process of readers, which ultimately construct the new institutional civilization and political civilization. The restoration of this process will surely serve as a good reference to China, a country confronted with similar issues at present.
胡振明. 作品、市场、社会:文学公共领域形成初探[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2018, 4(1): 203-.
Hu Zhenming. Books, Market and Society: The Formation of Literary Public Sphere. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2018, 4(1): 203-.