Luka Novak’s volume in the series Studia litteraria

The latest addition to Studia litteraria, the book series curated by members of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, brings a book by Luka Novak titled Od izgubljenih iluzij do umetne inteligence: potrošništvo med Balzacom in Pasolinijem (‘From Lost Illusions to Artificial Intelligence: Consumerism between Balzac and Pasolini’). In the book, Novak interprets selected literary works using methods of literary sociology in order to study the role literature played in the evolution of consumer society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Applying Bourdieu’s concept of the literary field and Goldmann’s sociological theory of the novel, the author approaches the novel as a bourgeois form in the context of liberal consumer society. Two tendencies dominate in relation to consumerism, according to Novak. The first, progressivist and optimist tendency builds on Balzac’s early realism and Zola’ naturalism and positivism to embrace and support consumer society using its influence in the newly autonomized literary field. The second tendency derives from the later realism of Flaubert’s kind and from Huysmans’ pessimism, which, influenced by Schopenhauer, rejects consumer society while drawing inspiration from it. The relation of the literary field toward consumer society as it developed in the twentieth century owes its contours to the premises of both tendencies.