The article addresses some synthesis elements and reflections in order to recover a social history of the "autonomization" process of the literary field, whose founda-tions were laid down by Bourdieu. That history should relate the exercise of literary activity to its social conditions as well as to the kinds of structural constrictions affecting it. Those constraints led to a growing diversification of structuring prin-ciples of such universe and to the rise of rival embodiments of the author: "the State writer", "the artist", "the intellectual" and "the professional writer", along a variety of institutions of literary life.
France; Literature; Sociology of culture; Professions; Intellectuals