On The New Features Of The Literature In The Consumer Era

With the advancement of technological, the development of production, the improvement of labor efficiency, more and more remaining were created by the community, including the remained time, the remained products, the remained energy. As surplus accumulated to a certain degree, we have gradually entered the consumer age and leaved the industrial age. In a consumer society, the change of people’s concept treating the commodity, which ignoring its use value and attach to its symbolic significance, marks the generation of concept for a new life, and of a new cultural context. So, in this cultural context of the consumerism, what changes will have of the literature itself and how we face to the new symptoms of the literature? We need to discuss these issues。 This paper will analysis this problem with three parts.In the first part, starting from some basic phenomenon in the consumer society, the paper discussed the changes of connotation of the consumption from the context of consumerism. We can see today’s consumer goods as a symbolic characterization, and in many consumer activities, it is better to say that we are consuming an identity rather than the consumer goods. Then, through the Baudrillard’s theory of consumer society, the paper has deeply analysised the consumer context, and discussed the changes which consumer context brought about to the literature’s living conditions. Now, the production of literature has come to the market, and both literature production and consumption are controlled by the law of commodity production and market operation.In the second part, starting from the tendency of the commercialization in the context of consumerism, the paper discussed the new features of the literary production in the consumer society. In the context of consumerism, the emerging non-traditional literary form appeared largely, literature trend to the secularization and its entertainment features highlight. From the changes of the writer’s status and the concept of the literary creation, the paper discussed the change of today’s literary work creators compared with the traditional. As a producer in a market economy, literary creators have left the social elite groups. Finally, from the shifting of the center of the language by the center of readers, the paper discussed the characteristics of readers in the context of consumerism, which more emphasis on entertainment and symbols in the process of reading.In the third part, the paper discussed the trend of literary pictorialization. Because the image literature is in line with the direction of the consumer era of literary development) so it became a typical existence of the consumer era. By analyzing the associated domain of the image Literature and the consumer society，the paper make a specific analysis of the new features of the consumptive literature in literary creation and literary reading, and Come to a conclusion that the trend of literary pictorialization is inevitable, and image literature is also in line with the reading needs of the readers of the consumer age.Epilogue:As the more and more importance to the reader in the consumer era, one of the best objective effects is provided an opportunity of up grade to the readers’dominant position. And in the same time, we need to think about how to maintain the purity of the literary production and the aesthetic feelings of the literary tradition. Nowadays as the prevalence of images of literature, it is in line with timely as the typical of the literary form in the context of consumerism. The case analysis allows us to better grasp the new symptoms of the literary production in the consumer era. At the same time we need to think about readers’dominant position under the flooding in the image of the book market.