The terms “politics” and “literature” are both “essentially-contestable“ concepts. “Politics” can mean political practice, political ideas or the study of politics; “literature” can mean the writing of books, the content of those books or the reading of them. “Politics and literature” is often taken to be synonymous with “political literature,” but different usages of “politics” and “literature” will produce other connections. Much of the work in “politics and literature” hitherto has been of a sociological nature. Less interest has been shown in the distinctively political aspects of the possible relationships between the study of politics — political thought in the widest sense — and the content of literature.
No methodology has yet been developed, in Literary Studies or Political Science, for the explication and understanding of these connections. The sociology of literature, however, provides terminology that may be useful in establishing such links.