Is György Lukács Obsolete? A Political Theory of the Novel

Abstract

This essay intends to reflect on Lukács’s ideas about the novel, within a complex reflection starting from the tragic condition of man in contemporary society. Lukács ’s theory of the novel is developed in two very different phases of the 20th Century: at the beginning of the Century, with his work “Theory of the Novel”, and later, in the ‘30s and ‘40s, with his essays about Realism. However, the “two Lukács ” admirably find a meeting point on a page of the essay “Contemporary Meaning of Critical Realism”. Mistakenly regarded as obsolete, the whole of Lukács’s aesthetic thought leads us to reconsider the problem, broadly speaking political, of the relationship of texts with the world, here and now.

Keywords

• Gyorgy Lukács
• Teoria del romanzo
• Teoria della letteratura
• Teoria neo marxista
• Sociologia della letteratura