[The Saucepan Man]

Thanks, Sophia. You are right. I was in no way saying that only books that receive widespread popularity should be considered as literary works. What I was saying was that mass appeal should not necessarily rule out literary acclaim.

tifo_gcs, I take your point about people being more superstitious in Shakepeare's time. This argument might even (at a stretch) apply to Frankenstein and Dracula. But I don't think that it follows that a book should deal only with "real life" issues in order to be regarded as a work of literature. The works that I mentioned are still regarded as great works of literature today, and I am pretty sure that there are not many academics who believe that there are fairies (or vampires, for that matter) at the bottom of their garden.

However, I use the word "should" above because, sadly, I think that you are right, tifo_gcs. There does seem to be a prevailing attitude amongst academics that popular contemporary works and/or those that belong to the fantasy, horror or sci-fi genres cannot be proper literary works. It should not be the case that such works automatically be denied literary status, but unfortunately it seems that, to a large degree, it is the case.

But then again, as I said before, why should we care? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

[ April 09, 2003: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]