1. The Dialectic of the Sex-Motif in Literature Sex is a function of culture; in literature today it plays only a small though aggressively righteous part. Nature, long held in bondage, periodically breaks out in revolt, but its victory is never complete. In every society, prim- itive as well as modem, the sexual instinct is for good or evil always subject to some measure of regulation and restraint. In literature, where the battle between love and sex, spirit and flesh, is fought out in terms of symbolic action, the writers support their cause, for or against sexual freedom, with varying...

1. Prolegomena The purpose of this book is to examine anew and from a number of different perspectives the highly complex and controversial relation between literature and society. This is not meant to be a study in sociology or political science; the analysis of literature - its structure, content, function, and effect - is our primary concern. What we shall try to find out is how the imaginative work is rooted in and grows out of the parent social body, to what extent it is influenced in subject matter as well as form and technique by the domi nant climate of ideas in a given historical...