Week 1 Questions

1. How has the academic reception of popular genres changes over time?

Popular genre’s, also known mass literature, encompasses a wide arrange of literary fiction that is not considered authorised literary canon by academics and highbrow educational organizations.

Literary canon consisted of poetry, high prose literature, and dramas were classical mega-genres and enjoyed by ledged status such as Shakespeare and Greek tragedy. Popular genre’s however included para-literature, pulp fiction, trivial literature. Melodramas, romance, spy novels, criminal detective series and costume-historical novels as well as thrillers, action novels, fantasy, science fiction, comics and manga. Popular genres were considered the “lowest level of literature”. They were books that were not part of the official literature hierarchy of its time due to certain elements explored within it such as the sketchiness of the plot, stereotyped ideas and topic content, clichés in the artistic shape and was “predictable”. Characters were often poorly characterised, others were used as plot devices rather than people and were considered simplifications of artistic ideas, making them primitive in nature.

One of the reasons why the perception of popular genres has changed, is because they are multi-modal and easily adapted into various other mainstream forms of entertainment such as books being transformed into television series or films, or alternatively even into plot driven games. This allows for a wider audience of readers or viewers to engage with mass literature.

2. What might the value be of studying them?

One way in which studying mass literature or Popular genres in an academic setting is further exposure to diversity. There higher inclusion of women, people of colour and members of the LGBTQ+ communities, allowing greater representation for post-colonial and other marginalised groups which would otherwise be excluded from today’s “literary classics”. Popular genres expands the literary field, branching into other genres and concepts that can and are explored within mass literature.

References

McAlister, J. 2018). Defining and redefining popular genres: The evolution of ‘new adult’ fiction. Australian Literary Studies 33.4.