A razão sensível: literatura e teoria sociológica em Émile Durkheim

Abstract

The paper seeks to understand the relationship between Émile Durkheim’s sociological theory and Courtesan’s Splendors and Miseries, by Honoré de Balzac, Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, and Naná, by Zola, with the aim of outlining and synthetizing its main characteristic elements, associating them with the tradition and modernity of social life in nineteenth-century France. From the main works of Émile Durlkheim and the novels cited, the research concentrated on understanding the main points of sociological analysis, as well identifying, in the theme of each novel, facets of franch social life that were also objects of observation of the sociological science at the turn of the century. Starting from the premise of the gradual autonomization of the literary and scientific fields and the respective symbolic struggles in these spaces of production, we seek to analyze the sociological and literary works by linking them to the political, historical and social contexto in which they emerged.