A Study Of The Popular Literature Of The 20th Century

The popular literature was an important part of the literature of the 20th century. Seeing that it was always despised and ignored in many histories of literature, this thesis tries to revaluate popular literature in the directions of theory, fact and value on the base of a through observation on the popular literature of the 20th century, which should have its own position and both is the study of it.The thesis includes six parts. The first is introduction, pointing out the unsuitable arrangement for the popular literature in now available histories of literature, and raise the necessity of the revaluation on it; the second analyzes why the popular literature was despised and ignored, indicates the weakness of the view of literature history; the third clarifies the confusion between the popular literature and the mass literature; the fourth gives a summary of the three stages of the popular literature of the 20th century, and challenges the meaning of the main stream and the edge; the fifth comments on popular literature with a new standard which differs from the usual way of saying what is elegant or vulgar; and the last, the concluding part, looks into the distance of popular literature according to its past.