Changing Cultural Tastes

At least three different questions might be implied by a concept such as ‘the popular’ in its relation to literature. One could ask whether common people are worthy subjects of literature, or whether common people are worthy creators of literature, or whether common people are worthy judges of literature. These three questions lead to three very different perspectives on literary history. The first question gives rise (in the most fortunate instance) to a treatise such as Eric Auerbach's Mimesis, which traces the access of everyday experience to literary representation from Homer to Virginia Woolf. The second question only comes into focus with Romantic enthusiasm for aboriginal folk art in the nineteenth century. Notions of personal authenticity and spontaneous genius emerge when literary creation throws off its dependence upon classical models and the educational processes that inculcate them in order to mediate the natural voice of the people. The third question gains urgency in the twentieth century when aesthetic modernism confronts mass conformity and the weight of artistic tradition with antagonistic avant-gardes, and leads to critiques of an alienating mass culture industry on the one hand or the elite literary canon on the other.

Aesthetics · Art · Conformity · Elite · Enthusiasm · Genius · Literature · Modernism (music) · Order (exchange) · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · Representation (politics) · Romance · Sociology · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · German Literature and Culture Studies · History · Law · Literature and Culture Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Topic-specific corpus building

  Open Access•Sarah Oberbichler, Eva Pfanzelter•Journal of Digital History•2021

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