Knowing through feeling: the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading

The Sociological Truth of Fiction: The Aesthetic Structure of a Novel and the Iconic Experience of Reading

“…In practical terms, I demonstrated (Váňa 2021) how sociologists can enter and facilitate a dialogue with a novel to acquire genuine social knowledge in the case of Bliss Was It in Bohemia (Viewegh 2015(Viewegh [1992). First, I outlined the aesthetic structure of the novel through my reading navigated by the public and scholarly discourse about the novel (literary critiques, radio debates, readers' comments, social media discussions, etc.)…”

“…In empirical studies (Váňa 2020a(Váňa , 2021, I employed my model by analyzing two selected Czech novels: Bliss Was It in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh (2015Viewegh ( [1992) and City, Sister, Silver by Jáchym Topol (2000Topol ( [1994). I focused on the iconic experience of reading as a key methodological feature to grasp the ambivalence of daily life during the period of late socialism in the 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia.…”

Encountering the Civil Sphere Through Cinema: The Cinematic Gap as a Pathway to Civil Evaluation and Repair

“…In a similar vein, Anna Michelson finds that romance fiction novels act as an ‘aesthetic public sphere’: a space where real engagement with politics can occur, whether it be on political issues that are incorporated into the narrative or with political sentiments of hope and utopia (Michelson, 2021). Departing from the experience of novel reading, Jan Váňa (2021) has focused on the aesthetic affordances in fiction novels, proposing that they create an ‘iconic experience of reading’ which mediates and amplifies novels’ underlying social knowledge.…”