Graa's work critically examines the continual rebirth of cultural romances on the part of literary intellectuals. His disdain for contrived rejections of modernity and for grand destructive gestures is combined with his intense appreciation of the romantic sensibility. Fact and Symbol embodies Graa's views of the enterprise of cultural sociology in which both words are given equal play.

This outstanding collection of hitherto unpublished work, written over the last fifteen years of the author's life, reveals the development and maturation of his ideas about sociology and art, and specifically about the relationship between them. Grafia sees in the artistic traditions of Western society the sociological sources of our sense of cultural form, as well as cultural and intellectual meaning. He discusses theories of art and theories of artists as they have changed over time, although the book is neither a history of art nor a criticism of specific artistic works. Rather, it is...