Research in Popular Literature and Praxis-Related Literary Scholarship: A Report

Abstract

Since the end of the sixties, the study of mass-produced and mass-consumed reading matter has become an accepted branch of traditional literary scholarship; the former has emancipated itself from the latter to the degree that the social aim of the study of literature has become the center of discussion. The student revolt of the late sixties with its insistence on fundamental change in course offerings and on curriculum reform has given a decisive impetus to the study of trivial literature.1 The didactics of literary studies that was discovered in conjunction with the now almost insoluble problems of teacher education demand that the education of language and literature teachers make use of praxis-related material, especially those texts which are predominantly read (or heard, or seen). It enters into an unholy alliance with technocratic-oriented educational reforms which are beginning to drive literary history out of the classroom. Recent guidelines for curricula reduce traditional literary instruction to an unimportant elective subject and advocate the teaching of popular and mass-produced texts as the main subject matter. The primary task of such a new curriculum in West Germany is to teach critical understanding (and usage) of colloquial speech and its textual manifestation.2 It stands to reason that literary scholarship based on scientific analyses of texts at the university and literary instruction in secondary schools should not be independent from each other, and with good reason the question is asked: which texts should be the primary concern of literary scholarship if its social purpose is the education of qualified teachers whose contemporaries read belles lettres in grotesque disproportion to popular reading matter. The following essay will be the first part of a report that will be continued in the third issue of New German Critique. It will concern itself with the problems and the latest theoretical works dealing with the investigation of popular literature.3 The