A Study On Literary Field In The Context Of Mass Culture

The theory of literary field created by Pierre Bourdieu describes the mechanism of literature production from a sociological perspective, which not only breaks through the external study taking the connection between literature and external world as center, but also goes beyond the internal study taking literary text as the center,and provides a operable method to survey the existence of literature, the mechanism of literature production, the interplay of literary,economic, political and other factors from a sociological perspective. By the literary field theory, Bourdieu gives a specific analysis to the development of literary history in the late19th century in France, studies on the literary thought, the mechanism of literary production, and literary authority from the sociological dimension with a macro perspective, which shows the theoretical values of literary field theory to analyze the literary history.Pierre Bourdieu describes the view of an ideal literary field in which autonomy of art is the guiding rule and the production of elite literature occupies a dominant position since nineteenth century western. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the western society has entered an era of mass culture. With a new historical context, the literary field in the era of mass culture presents many different characteristics from elite culture times. The development of literature shows the different mechanisms in literary production. The use of mass media, the invasion of the commodity logic has brought important changes in the structure of the literary field. In1980s, Chinese contemporary literary field obtains autonomy by means of struggling against with political field. With the invasion of consumer culture, the literary field combines with the economic field; Chinese contemporary literature has undergone a huge transformation in the mechanism of literary production. Chinese contemporary literary field in the era of mass culture has produced three literary sub-fields which are the field of traditional literature production, the field of mass literature production and the field of network literature production after twice fission of structure. Currently Chinese contemporary literary field has a mixture of three mechanism of literary production:the canonization of traditional literature, the mechanism of bestseller’s production and the integration mode of network literature. With the theory of literary field we can study on the development of Chinese contemporary literature, analysis the effects of external factors and the changes of the internal structure on contemporary literature from a sociological dimension, and get a new perspective to review the development of Chinese contemporary literature.This paper includes the following sections to study on the production mechanism of Chinese contemporary literature in the context of mass culture with literary field theory.The introduction describes the purpose of selecting the subject, the research status in China, and the intention of this study.The first chapter introduces the literary field theory created by Pierre Bourdieu. He analyzes the French literature in the late19th century from the "field" perspective, and points out the three stages of literary field’s development:the stage of getting autonomy, the stage of the dual structure, the stage of producing a symbol value. From a macroscopic perspective, the structure of literary field shows two sub-fields which are the field of pure literature production and the field of mass literature production. During three stages of development literary field produces the belief, shows logic of "loser is winner", presents an economic world turned upside down.The second chapter analyses the problems in the literary field in the context of mass culture. Mass media brings the production of literature a characteristic of stereotype, weakens the uniqueness of literature. The literary field loses the autonomy because of the invasion of commercial logic, and begins to link with the economic field. The entertainment of mass culture brings the division of literary field, in which the unified literary illusion begins to collapse.The third chapter discusses the "field" changes of the Chinese contemporary literature in the context of mass culture. Chinese contemporary literature has gone through three stages of development:the literary field is closely related with the political field, obtaining autonomy and associated with the economic field. Currently Chinese contemporary literary field in the era of mass culture has produced three literary sub-fields which are the field of traditional literature production, the field of mass literature production and the field of network literature production and formed three modes of literature production. This chapter will make a detailed analysis of each mechanism of production fields, and point out some reasons for this situation.The epilogue thinks that the literary field theory has a huge theoretical value to review the development of Chinese contemporary literature. The literary field theory not only gives us a good theoretical perspective to analyze the mechanism of Chinese contemporary literature in the era of mass culture, but also provide a way to break through for the future of Chinese literature,which is rebuild the autonomy of literary field and back to Bourdieu’s "aesthetics utopia".