Literary Reputation in the Modern Literary Field: The Critic’s View

This article examines the forms of social evaluation of writers' work in modern Russia. As a methodological basis, the theory of the “literary field” developed by Pierre Bourdieu and his followers is used, on the basis of which a conceptual and empirical reconstruction of the concepts of social status and reputation was carried out. Based on an empirical thematic analysis of public interviews with leading Russian experts in the field of literary process, a set of topics regarding the social status of the writer and his literary reputation in the Russian literary field has been identified. A discrepancy in the opinions of various groups of experts was found, which may indicate the presence of antagonism in the modern literary field. This circumstance, coupled with the dependent state of the literary field on the political one, confirms the hypothesis of the marginalization of these concepts and, accordingly, related social practices in modern Russia.

Rethinking Jonathan Swift Ashley Marshall Louise Barnett , Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Pp. xi, 225. $75.00. Dustin Griffin , Swift and Pope: Satirists in Dialogue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Pp. xiv, 260. $95.00. Stephen Karian , Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Pp. x, 274. $85.00. Sean D. Moore , Swift, the Book, and the Irish Financial Revolution: Satire and Sovereignty in Colonial Ireland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). Pp. xi, 268. $65.00. [End Page 405] Claude Rawson , ed., Politics and Literature in the Age of Swift: English and Irish Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Pp. xiii, 297. $95.00. The collective virtue of these five books—each illuminating and useful in its own right—is that they are largely devoted to something other than interpretation of much-studied Swift works. They are not just yet more re-readings of A Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels. These studies attempt to see Swift in relationship to particular sets of contexts—events, milieux, people—and they involve either mapping largely uncharted territories or revisiting familiar subjects in refreshingly new ways. Stephen Karian's Jonathan Swift in Print and Manuscript is clear evidence of new directions. Karian's welcome study is the first to pay serious attention to the complex origins and transmission of Swift's texts; its object is in part to demonstrate "how the material existence of his texts affected their circulation and reception" (4). The Dean, as Karian bluntly concludes, "cannot be identified simply as a print author" (98). Karian's opening chapter explores what he identifies as three phases in Swift's career in print; chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to describing the various ways in which Swift's manuscripts circulated, as well as the different reasons and audiences for nonprint transmission. The last three chapters—on the complicated print and manuscript circulation of On Poetry: A Rapsody, The Legion Club, and Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift—demonstrate the utility of Karian's approach. In chapter 4, he explains that On Poetry as printed in 1733 was significantly censored, seeks to identify the most authorial version of the poem, and describes the variants in manuscript copies. Chapter 5 convincingly demonstrates that Swift was solely responsible for minor textual revisions of and additions to The Legion Club, arguing that the later revisions were Swift's own attempt to qualify his satire. In chapter 6, Karian calls attention to the "material text" of Verses on the Death, to the gaps and blanks (filled in by modern editors) that invited contemporary readers to infer meaning for themselves. Swift's (or Faulkner's?) use of this "device of textual absence" leaves us with an "open" text, and the implications are sobering: "parts of this poem existed in either no authoritative form or in multiple authoritative forms" (198, 196). Along the way, Karian challenges the usual attitude toward print versus manuscript culture, the tendency to regard print as "authoritative, public, stable, variable, and author-centered," and manuscript as "ephemeral, private, variable, and reader-centered" (5). Karian's study is learned and meticulous, and no interpretation of particular Swift works or groups of works can afford to ignore the textual issues to which he calls attention. One could wish that the book were a bit less cautious. The care with which Karian handles a complicated set of materials is vital to the utility of the enterprise. But his findings have major implications for how we talk about Swift's output and his self-definition as an author, and I would have loved to see Karian exercising his critical imagination and exploring the kinds of conclusions we might draw about Swift-as-writer. What does Swift's decision not to supervise, even indirectly, the publication of Gulliver's Travels suggest? How many major writers do not try to ensure that future readers would have correct and authorized versions of their works? Swift represents a different kind of author from most of the canonical figures we study, and attempting to apply to him our usual concepts of "textual authority" and "literary reputation" somehow never...

Introduction: Since the 1960s the interest in measuring the function of public relations and corporate communication has noticeably increased, thus the emergence of proposals for measurement indicators simply followed suit. Some models that explored this activity have focused on analyzing the relationships established between an organization and its publics, while others have explored the concept of corporate reputation. Currently, this function is also monitored in social networks. Method and Analysis: The present study has delved into the structure of online reputation metrics listed by famous market research company Forrester that regularly publishes the state of the art for these types of tools (Liu, 2020; 2021). Delving further into previous descriptive research (Cuenca Fontbona, Matilla & Compte-Pujol, 2016), a descriptive study has been carried out of the websites of the organisations offering these metrics or "social listening platforms". Additional primary data has been collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews with communication professionals (N=180) from Lithuania in organizations of various sectors, in order to explore the level of awareness, adoption and usefulness of these online measurement tools for strategic decision making. Results: It can be firmly claimed that all these digital monitors stem from a tradition set on the construct of reputation, while relationships, the very essence of the public relations profession, are excluded. Besides, there is an enormous confusion of terminology and criteria about the variables used; the lack of a universally valid instrument is evident. The value proposition includes some type of exercise related to public relations and corporate communication, yet the “online” corporate reputation metrics fail to encompass the extensive multidisciplinary area of ​​action that these disciplines display. Conclusion: Although the management of intangible resources is a benchmark, these tools only provide quantitative information about the reputational image of a single stakeholder: consumers/customers, focusing on drivers related to the marketing and commercialization of the company’s products. Thus, they fail to provide comprehensive information on the reality of an organization’s corporate reputation.

Reviewed by: Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, 1885–1925 by Martin Hipsky Anne Cunningham Martin Hipsky. Modernism and the Women’s Popular Romance in Britain, 1885–1925. Athens: Ohio UP, 2011. xxi + 316 pp. Despite the recent emergence of scholarship on low modern and popular modernist genres, the work of women romance writers has not received the attention that their past popularity merits. Martin Hipsky’s study attempts to redress the “romance gap” by examining a small group of romances that “best exemplified the meteoric rise of the woman-authored love story in Britain” (xii). In doing so, he provides a detailed evolution of the popular romance genre, and draws some insightful connections to high modernist works. Considering writing by Mansfield, Lawrence, Joyce, West, and Woolf, he examines how these “modernist writers incorporated elements of the romance mode and a related neo-Romanticism into their innovative fiction” (xvi). Indeed, one organizing principle of his study is drawn from Gillian Beer’s The Romance (1970), that “all fiction contains two primary impulses: the impulse to imitate daily life, and the impulse to transcend it” (xi). Throughout the study Hipsky returns to an important link between an emergent modernism and the popular romance, which is that both depart from literary realism of the nineteenth century. The romance writers he considers have “followed the same directive as the high modernists: the imperative to loft us, however fleetingly or intermittently, into a refashioned symbolic order that would bridge us across the pain of the historical Real” (xxi). Hipsky’s first chapter gives an overview of the romance mode and British literary practice, delineating how prior to World War I, almost all popular novels were placed in the not yet gendered category of “romance.” It was not until the third decade of the twentieth century that the romance as a narrative mode was considered a feminine genre. Previously, popular romances did not bear the ideological stigma of the “feminized ‘other’ discourse” (2). While he [End Page 855] notes that feminist criticism and gender studies may offer the most useful framework regarding theories of genre and mode, he nonetheless is “not presuming to offer a bid for the canonization of the neglected women writers or to describe the historical reading experience of the female audience” (2). Rather, his concern is to map how what we refer to today as the “women’s romance” took shape out of shifts in the literary field that occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century. Although beyond the avowed scope of the study, an analysis grounded in gender studies and feminist theory would have benefitted his theoretical framework. Using Bourdieu’s theory of literary production and reception, Hipsky’s second chapter charts developments in categories of popular fiction penned by women through the career of romance writer Mary Ward. By 1880 there were two ready-made roles for female fiction writers: the “serious lady novelists” such as Austen, Brontë, and George Eliot, and the “silly lady novelists,” a term coined by Eliot herself for female writers of melodramatic popular novels (21). Mary Ward innovated these two disparate positions over the course of her career. After establishing herself as a “serious lady novelist,” she employed aggressive marketing tactics and achieved unprecedented sales figures and transatlantic success. Ward seemingly transformed herself into a “money-generating fiction machine” and all traces of intellectual ambition and resistance to generic codification had drained from her work by 1908 (43). Subsequently, the most successful female fiction writers in Edwardian England soon abandoned the “serious lady novelist” model altogether. Ward’s trend to write strictly for mass audience appeal had derisive effects on the cultural capital of women’s fiction. It took the emergence of high modernist female writers such as Woolf, West, Mansfield, Richardson, and others to redeem the “symbolic capital of the female literary writer as a social construct” (61); however, this came at a price of increasing the polarization of the literary field. By 1920 intellectually ambitious writers distanced themselves as much as possible from writers who catered to large-scale literary production. Hipsky’s compelling point in this chapter—that modernist women writers defined themselves “as Ward’s...

This article1 traces the construction of Irène Némirovsky's literary reputation in inter-war France, drawing on Bourdieu's notion of the literary field. It aims to go beyond the ethical interpretation of her life and work in relation to the Holocaust to examine both its aesthetic and its sociological significance in the inter-war period. The article first examines Némirovsky as a popular writer, showing how she succeeded in establishing herself as a commercially successful and critically acclaimed novelist. It then considers the relevance of her Russian origins and her Jewish identity to her literary production. It analyses the ways in which she drew on her Russian identity in order to locate her writing in relation to the inter-war French fascination with la mode russe. Finally, it addresses the existence of anti-Semitic stereotypes in Némirovsky's early work, approaching this problematic aspect of her textual production from a cultural rather than a psychological perspective.

“There's Millions in It!”: <i>The Gilded Age</i> and the Economy of Satire

This chapter examines the later work of these two canonical US modernist writers, who are treated as major figures in the sixth volume of this literary history, and the role that the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes played in the formation of their literary reputations as the pillars of “high modernism” in the United States. Canonizing Faulkner and Hemingway aligned well with the masculinist perspective that was implicit in this high modernist view, because both writers tended to focus on male protagonists struggling to assert both their individuality and their masculinity against hostile natural, social, and political environments. The chapter concludes by examining the work of Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac, who were both inspired and antagonized by the high modernism of Faulkner and Hemingway and who would, at least for a while, replace these writers on the center stage of the US literary scene.

Xenotransplantation is closer to clinical reality than ever, with planned clinical trials in development. Enrolling participants in these trials may be difficult without an understanding of patient and public perceptions, attitudes, and ethical concerns related to xenotransplantation. In this article, we summarize recent literature and discuss areas for continued focus related to the public perception of xenotransplantation. Following the first living human xenotransplant in January 2022, several surveys have assessed various groups' acceptance of xenotransplantation. Awareness of xenotransplant remains low despite the widely publicized first-in-human experiences. Acceptance rates vary widely and depend on the scenario presented (factors such as success compared to allotransplant) and the level of existing knowledge. However, evidence is highly focused on Western populations and upper middle-income countries. The public's understanding and thoughts related to issues such as informed consent, animal welfare, the influence of religion, and zoonosis have not been adequately addressed. Despite decades of attempts to understand public perception and attitudes around xenotransplantation, there remains little information, and essential knowledge gaps exist. More active involvement of diverse populations should be considered to support the future of equitable xenotransplantation.

Om Grundtvig-udgaver

The world has faced a major increase in forced displacement and the theme has also become the subject of many public, media and political debates. The public communication of refugee organizations thereby increasingly impacts their operations, the public perception on forcibly displaced people and societal and policy beliefs and actions. However, little research has been conducted on the topic. Therefore, this conceptual article aims to (1) define refugee organizations’ public communication, (2) situate it within broader research fields, and (3) motivate the latter’s relevance as research perspectives. In order to be able to achieve these research objectives, the article first discusses the social and scientific relevance of the research subject and identifies important gaps within literature which both form an essential scientific base for developing the main arguments. Adopting a historical perspective, the article demonstrates that in recent decades the social and scientific relevance of research on strategic and non-profit communication in general and on refugee organizations’ public communication in particular have increased. Nevertheless, these fields remain underdeveloped and are mostly text-focused, while the production and reception dimensions are barely explored. Remarkably, however, little or no research has been conducted from an organizational communication perspective, although this article demonstrates that the subject can be adequately embedded in and examined from the fields of strategic, non-profit and public communication. Finally, the article highlights the relevance of the holistic Communicative Constitution of Organizations perspective and argues that future research can benefit by adopting multi-perspective, practice-oriented, multi-methodological, comparative and/or interdisciplinary approaches.

In modern political systems, public opinion plays a significant role in strengthening trust and maintaining the legitimacy of power. Today, many countries face a crisis of trust in government institutions, the consequences of which impact political stability. Therefore, the effectiveness of political communication between the government and society remains a relevant issue, particularly in the context of Kazakhstan’s adherence to the principles and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The article is devoted to identifying and analyzing the factors and barriers that influence the reputation of public authorities in Kazakhstan. A review of academic literature has made it possible to develop an understanding of the concept of governmental reputation and its relationship with political trust and public expectations. State reputation is viewed as both a resource of power and the result of public perception, shaped by the performance of government institutions, citizens’ experiences in interacting with them, public communication, established trust, and expectations. The article analyzes the role of measures adopted in Kazakhstan to improve feedback mechanisms in political communication. Based on primary and secondary data, the study highlights the characteristics and level of public awareness regarding political processes as an indicator of their impact on the perception of authority. The research emphasizes the issue of communicating the image of public power. Keywords: political reputation, image, government portrayal, public perception, political communication

In the digital era, government public communications face complex new challenges, particularly in building positive public perceptions of government performance. Digital transformation has changed patterns of interaction between the government and the public, creating an increasingly critical, connected, and participatory society. The primary issue in this research is the effectiveness of government Public Relations (PR) digital communication strategies in responding to the dynamics of this digital society. The research focuses on how innovations in government PR communication content influence public perceptions in the context of digital public communications. This research uses a Rapid Review approach, analyzing nine relevant scientific articles published in 2025 and applying the ADO(Antecedent–Decision–Outcome) framework. Three main theories serve as the basis for the analysis: Government Communication Theory, Image Management Theory, and Digital Public Participation Theory. The findings indicate that the success of government public communications in the digital era is significantly influenced by three main factors: first, innovative, creative and interactive content that attracts attention and builds engagement; second, a two-way communication strategy that adapts to public feedback; and third, consistency in shaping and maintaining a positive and credible digital narrative. Furthermore, this research reveals that participatory and open digital communication can increase public trust, reduce disinformation, and strengthen the legitimacy of government institutions. Thus, this research provides a practical contribution to the development of public communication strategies that are more participatory, inclusive, and responsive to the dynamics of the digital era. The results of this study are expected to serve as a reference for government communication practitioners in designing effective and relevant public communication policies amidst the rapid and competitive flow of information.

This paper studies the media image of a modern Russian writer Dina Rubina basing on her portrait (face-to-face) interviews and subject-related portrait interviews in various contemporary Russian and pro-Russian media: newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, and the internet-media. Growing interest to modern writers in the media environment and to interaction between the writer and the reader via mass media determines the topicality of the research. The study object is a public figure from the literary community. In this relation, the author finds it necessary to distinguish between the notions "media image", "imagery", and "image". The interviews with Dina Rubina are analyzed in the context of the form and contents of her works, which helps to identify and fix some personal intentions of the writer. The author studies the writer's media image basing on the theory of archetypes, as well as their influence on Dina Rubina's and her interviewers' professional behavior. The specific character of the questions asked to the writer prove the importance of the archetype of the creator and its dominance among the contributory archetypes, namely, those of the Harlequin and the mother. Special attention is paid to the gender aspect of a modern writer's media image, which is quite significant for Dina Rubina and her readers.

In the eyes of West German academic sociology, the sociology of literature and, particularly, of its literary effects, appears to be an unwelcome hybrid form of sociology. This reflects a tendency which was also characteristic of German society in the Weimar Republic. Then, too, it was largely left to outsiders to pose the general probblems in the sociology of literature. Typical were L. L. Schucking,1 with his largely geistesgeschichtlich sociology of literary taste (Lehre von den Geschmackstragertypen), or W. Strauss's study of literature effects.2 The questions which form the basis of R. Konig's early work3 centre in a similar fashion to his study of the dissolution of the Naturalist aesthetic in France4 on issues of social aesthetics and taste discussed in the context of cultural science. Another focus of the early sociology of literature in Germany was the question of 'literary success'. Of course, we must bear in mind here that in the sociology of the 1920s 'success' was still a legitimate object of investigation.5 It was typical that the discussion of literary success and literary reputation was conducted in the art pages (Feuilleton) of the press and outside the realm of academic sociology.6 None the less, although they were neglected at the time, as they are today, these were the first attempts to elaborate the connection between literary theory and literary production.7 The Nazis had no use for critical sociology and sociologists. On the contrary, they drove a whole generation of sociology teachers to emigration. The literary sociologists of the day (e.g. E. KohnBrahmstedt or L. Lowenthal)8 shared the same fate as German writers (e.g. T. Mann, H. Mann, B. Brecht, F. Wolf, A. Seghers, K. Tucholsky, W. Bredel, J. R. Becher). What then passed for the sociology of literature in Germany can safely be forgotten.9

The 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korea gave rise to chaos caused by psychological anxiety, and it has been assumed that people shared rumors about hospital lists through social media. Sharing rumors is a common form of public perception and risk communication among individuals during an outbreak. Social media analysis offers an important window into the spatiotemporal patterns of public perception and risk communication about disease outbreaks. Such processes of socially mediated risk communication are a process of meme diffusion. This article aims to investigate the role of social media meme diffusion and its spatiotemporal patterns in public perception and risk communication. To do so, we applied analytical methods including the daily number of tweets for metropolitan cities and geovisualization with the weighted mean centers. The spatiotemporal patterns shown by Twitter users' interests in specific places, triggered by real space events, demonstrate the spatial interactions among places in public perception and risk communication. Public perception and risk communication about places are relevant to both social networks and spatial proximity to where Twitter users live and are interpreted in reference to both Zipf's law and Tobler's law.