What about it? Marx was, in addition to his better known career as a political theorist, also a historical theorist. In his theory of history, the most important drivers are not great people or ideologies, but rather, materialism, economics, and class structure. Basically Marx thought that in general, things happened and changed in human societies mainly as a result of economic structures and resources. Everything else was secondary to those.
So what would it mean to apply those same ideas to literature? Well, literature is part of history. It is a product of history, because authors are embedded in the same processes that cause history. So therefore, we can read literature and try to interpret it through the lens of historical materialism and class structure. How is class and class structure represented in a certain work? How did historical material processes like economic changes result in or influence what is represented in the work? Etc.
What about it? Marx was, in addition to his better known career as a political theorist, also a historical theorist. In his theory of history, the most important drivers are not great people or ideologies, but rather, materialism, economics, and class structure. Basically Marx thought that in general, things happened and changed in human societies mainly as a result of economic structures and resources. Everything else was secondary to those.
So what would it mean to apply those same ideas to literature? Well, literature is part of history. It is a product of history, because authors are embedded in the same processes that cause history. So therefore, we can read literature and try to interpret it through the lens of historical materialism and class structure. How is class and class structure represented in a certain work? How did historical material processes like economic changes result in or influence what is represented in the work? Etc.