From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century critical judgements about popular culture remained extremely diverse; theorists both celebrated the emergence and preservation of popular cultural forms and lamented the rise of new market-dri

From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century critical judgements about popular culture remained extremely diverse; theorists both celebrated the emergence and preservation of popular cultural forms and lamented the rise of new market-driven cultural commodities. Perhaps because of such diversity, there are areas in which a thorough assessment of the relationships within and between these positions remains to be done. Popular culture was itself extremely diverse and developments in critical studies have helped to produce a more detailed picture of the forms that popular culture took at that time. Recent work in nineteenth century and modernist studies has also begun to question the degree to which ‘high’ and ‘low’ literary forms remained separate during this period. Nevertheless, the interaction between and within these different cultural modes is still requires further elaboration.

The English Literature Group at the University of Hertfordshire is launching a series of research seminars intended to explore the questions around popular culture and theories of the popular during this period. These papers might address the following areas:



Do the attempts to theorise the popular from this period offer any future directions for literary studies?

Have the contributions of mass literacy and literary commodification been adequately theorised in terms of their contribution to either popular cultural forms or the changing attitudes towards such cultural formations?

Are the conventional explanations of how the relations between popular culture and ‘high’ literary culture changed and developed during this period still adequate?

How coherent or diverse was popular culture at any time during these years?

What sort of interaction occurred between the apparently contradictory attitudes towards popular culture and/or literary culture?

How much influence did the theorising of popular culture have upon popular cultural formations?



Paper abstracts approximately 500 words in length, should be sent to l.connell@herts.ac.uk by 1st September 2003.



A selection of papers from this series will be published in the journal Critical Survey.