Abstract
“Popular literature” is a term that appears in serious literary context most often as a means of disparaging the unremitting yokelism of the larger reading public and the cynical but uninspired writers who prey on the pocketbooks of yokeldom. The term may also appear in contexts in which its meaning is altogether different, as in the sober studies carried out by anthropologists and folklorists in which the literary manifestations of folk culture are studied. In the latter instance, the term loses its burden of vague antagonism and assumes a scholarly respectability based on the tested relevance and importance of primitive, preliterate, or peasant societies. In literate societies such as ours, the large area between this popular literature and the real literature of the truly cultured minority is dealt with gingerly, if at all. It is tacitly taken to represent the same kind of mindless consumerism that makes such an innovation as the electric canopener an overnight commercial success.
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