Paper-VI : Popular Literature Unit-5

Readings
Section -1
Popular Fiction: Ideology or Utopia?
Christopher Pawling
Deb Dulal Halder

1.1 Introduction
After reading the previous four units in this paper, you must have arrived at an understanding
of what constitutes Popular Fiction and why the writings of Lewis Carroll, Sukumar Roy,
Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Durgabai Vyam, and Agatha Christie have been bracketed together
as popular fiction. You have so far explored the realm and contours of Popular Fiction
through the reading of the texts by the above mentioned authors. This unit will make you
explore the idea of popular fiction further. Christopher Pawling’s essay “Popular Fiction:
Ideology or Utopia” will help you cohesively understand the idea of Popular Fiction and
Culture. It is advised at this juncture to read the original essay “Popular Fiction: Ideology or
Utopia” by Christopher Pawling as that will make you understand the essay and the related
concepts in a better fashion.
1.2 Learning Objectives
In this Unit, we will learn about –
 What is Popular Fiction?
 The way Christopher Pawling defines the contours of Popular Fiction
 Whether Popular Fiction simply deals with utopian things or it has ideological
manifestations?
 The relationship between Popular Fiction and Ideology
 Cawelti and Lowenthal’s discourse on Popular fiction
 Antonio Gramsci and Popular culture/ fiction
1.3 Pawling’s Essay “Popular Fiction Ideology or Utopia?”
Christopher Pawling’s essay “Popular Fiction Ideology or Utopia?” is taken from Popular
Fiction and Social Change edited by Christopher Pawling himself and published from
London by Macmillan in 1984. The essay deals with divergent issues of popular fiction but
the primary objective of Pawling is to establish the premise of Popular fiction as a serious
branch of study and not just a “significant other” on which the identity of English literature as
an intellectual discipline is dependent. As the essay is an introduction to an edited book by

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Pawling therefore the divergent issues that are taken up by Pawling are not being elaborated
in detail, but are merely put in brief terms so as to introduce the subject matter, which is
being discussed by the essayists in the book.
It needs to be elaborated here before one undertakes a further study of popular fiction,
that it is a branch of Cultural Studies which also emphasizes on the studying culture from the
point of view of it being a “way of life” (Raymond Williams), rather than it being thought as
the ideal. Before progressing further let us delve a bit deeper into the understanding of culture
and its modern manifestations.

A Note on Culture
Culture is usually thought to be a dubious word and one of the most complex
words to define in as it has multiple meanings and has been changing its
connotations and significations with each age and with each scholar. Each
person seems to be defining the term in their own way and this adding to its
multiple layers of meanings. Raymond Williams, the famous Marxist critic, a
Cultural Materialist, thought that it is the most difficult word that he had come
across as he states in his famous book Keywords.
When Raymond Williams came back to Cambridge after the war, he was
preoccupied with one single word and its different manifestations – the word
was “culture.” Raymond Williams comments – “I had heard it previously in two
senses: one at the fringes, in teashops and places like that, where it seemed the
preferred word for a kind of social superiority, not in ideas or learning, and not
only in money or position, but in a more intangible area, relating to behavior;
yet also, secondly, among my own friends, where it was an active word for
writing poems and novels, making films and paintings, working in theatres.
What I was now hearing were two different senses, which I could not really get
clear: first, in the study of literature, a use of the word to indicate, powerfully
but not explicitly, some central formation of values (and literature itself had
the same kind of emphasis); secondly, in more general discussion, but with
what seemed to me very different implications, a use which made it almost
equivalent to society: a particular way of life” – “American culture,”
“Japanese culture.”
The emphasis on this word by Williams makes it evident that it is one of the
words in the vocabulary and parlance of English language which needs to be
probed time and again to manifest its different facets and dimensions. Culture
can be defined in multiple ways depending on from which position one is trying
to define culture. Culture may mean the ideal, the best that is thought and
written by the humankind which is a very narrow view about culture or Culture
may mean a “way of life” which gives a much broader definition of culture and
there has been accepted in today’s world as the definition of culture. In defining

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culture, the Marxist critic Raymond Williams has a great role to perform as
according to him, there are at least three important ways of defining Culture –
“Culture as the Ideal – that is, when culture is “an embodiment of perfect and
universal values” (“the best that has been thought and written”). In this kind of
a view of culture, the notion and analysis of culture is limited to the rummage
around and detection of such “timeless values” which are represented in the
lives of the artists and writers or their works. In this definition of culture, which
was prevalent before the 1960s, Culture meant the culture of the “ruling class”
and all other ways of life was thought to be sub-cultured or uncultured.”
For example, in the colonial context, the European superiority complex led
them to think as elite European male culture to be the only culture and whatever
did not confirm to the culture of Elite European male was thought to be
uncultured. When the Europeans visited Africa, they thought Africa did not
have a civilization of their own and are uncultured beings as African way of life
did not confirm to the European standards. In this context, it is to be
remembered that Africans had a culture of their own, a civilization as rich as the
European one; it is just that the Euro-centric ways could not see any culture in
African ways of life. Same is not only true about Africa, but also about India,
Latin America and host of other colonized countries.
Culture as Documentary means that all kinds of human thoughts, their
language and linguistics activities, different forms of representations as well as
conventions and experiences are represented and recorded. But even in this kind
of a view of culture the descriptive act is done from the perspective of a
comparison with the ideal – that is, Culture as an Ideal.
Culture as social - as “a way of life” which means that culture is expressed as
the structure of feeling/ consciousness/ sensibilities/ sensibilities of a social
group. In this kind of a view of culture, Culture is “analyzed, clarified and
valued” in terms of meanings and values of ordinary behaviour and social
institutions as well as in terms of their place in art and learning. As stated
earlier, if we take this definition of culture as “a way of life” then it seems
pretty clear that anyone’s way of life can be termed as culture. So according to
this definition of Culture, Women have women’s culture, working class have
working class culture, colonized have a culture of their own, students have a
culture of their own and so on and so forth.
From these three definitions of culture it can be made out that when I. A.
Richards and the New Critics are trying to define culture in their critical writing
they have a very limited view of Culture as they think of Culture only from the
point of view of Culture as the Ideal, in the sense of what is best written and
thought about human beings and their civilization. This view of culture is not
only biased but also at the same time has a very narrow scope as it talks about

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the elitist notion of culture.
Culture is not merely the ideal, as the ideal is something that is decided by the
ruling class. And anything that does not bear resemblance to the culture of the
ruling class is thought to be no culture at all. Here it is important to understand
the Marxist concept of Base and Super structure to some extent as without
doing so it is difficult to understand the modern notion of culture. The culture is
also a construct of the ruling class and they tend to decide what “culture” would
signify at a given point of time. For them it was very significant to define and
mark what “culture” meant at a particular point of time as based on what is
decided to be culture, they rule over the supposed semi-cultured and the
uncultured masses.
From this Marxist presumption, there has been a lot of development in the
Cultural Studies in the twentieth century where cultural production of texts and
other narratives are seen from a particular point of view. It is significant to
understand here that the Marxists critics had problems with this definition of
Culture as the culture of the mass (the popular culture) is being denied any
space in the definition of ‘culture as an ideal.’ Therefore people by Terry
Eagleton and Raymond Williams hit back such definitions of Culture made of
the Leavisites (F. R. Leavis and his followers) and I. A. Richards also criticized
the notion of Canon-formation, as “the canonicity of the canon has become a
yardstick to slot literary works as mainstream or otherwise.”
For Raymond Williams, Cultural materialism, a kind of theory that he proposes,
is based on Marxism which is based on “the elaboration of historical
materialism” – “Latent within historical materialism is ... a way of
understanding the diverse social and material production ... of works to which
the connected but also changing categories of art have been historically applied.
I call this position cultural materialism.” Williams counter-posed to “high
culture” – “This extraordinary decision to call certain things culture and then
separate them, as with a park wall, from ordinary people and ordinary work.”
Similarly, Eagleton similarly bounced back on the Leavisites, as well as that of
the critical writings of I. A. Richards by saying that with the coming up of the
new classes into the scene, the notion of culture changed as the new group tried
to reformulate things to make spaces for themselves. Eagleton says – “literature
did more than ‘embody’ certain social values: it was a vital instrument for their
deeper entrenchment and wider dissemination. Literature interacts with social
forces and creates another set of values altering the existing system.” Or “With
the need to incorporate the increasingly powerful but spiritually rather raw
middle classes into unity with the ruling aristocracy, to diffuse polite social
manners, habits of ‘correct’ taste and common cultural standards, literature
gained a new importance.”

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 In the essay, Pawling heavily denounces the Puritan academic world for undermining
Popular Fiction (PF) and term it as “Para literature”. When the academicians feel that PF
cannot be academically studied; and even if studied, then it can only be limited to “empirical
surveys of the production, marketing and consumption of popular fiction” it fails “to make
connections between the literary artifact and the social context in which it moves and has its
being.” Any literary text or any kind of representation is produced within a particular context,
the socio-political, cultural and economic context of the production of that text necessarily
finds manifestation within the text.
For example, can we think of James Bond movies or the genre of thrillers without the
bifurcation of the world into capitalist and communist blocks post World War II which led to
the Cold War. In James Bond texts (written by Ian Fleming) finds manifestation the politics
of the Cold War. One may read a Fleming novel or watch a James Bond movie and comment
that ‘it is for pleasure of the male audience that the Bond movies are made in a particular way
which appeals to the male audience.’ But a closer critical look at any Ian Fleming text or
Bond movie will tell us that they are inherently racial, deeply patriarchal and championing
Capitalism. When one reads a Bond text, one may not notice all these as the text is made in
such a manner where the pleasure of the readers is much greater than merely telling the
readers to look at the ideologies in the text which are represented. The immediate thrill of the
text or the narrative of the film makes the readers/ audience forget about the ideological
manifestations in the text, but that does not mean that ideologies are not there in a Bond text
or movie.
Thus, while studying Bond texts, merely accounting the number of copies of the book
sold or a statistical data of the popularity of the text should not be the domain of academic
study as far as literary studies is concerned. Probably a marketing study can focus on these
elements where the ambit of the study is sales of a particular narrative; but when it comes to
the domain of literary studies or cultural studies, the study of the ideologies represented in the
text is of paramount significance.
It is with these terms that Christopher Pawling made a critique of the general tendency of
the academicians in his essay to give Popular Fiction (PF) its due – to place PF in the same
parameter as that of any other literature.
Thus popular fiction has been studied, but merely to the extent of it being a product of
mass consumption, but the study of the relationship between the product and the social and
cultural milieu that produces the product is deliberately being evaded as that is the domain of
the elite fiction. That ideology is manifest in each cultural production and reproduction is
deliberately being eschewed so that popular fiction, along with other marginal cultural
artifacts, can be seen as objects having no aesthetic value and no ideological significance as it
is merely utopian in character.
Scholars like Lowenthal have gone a step further to think in terms of popular fiction
being “purveyor of false consciousness.” Thinking along the Marxist terminology, Lowenthal

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argues that “ruling class ideas are the ruling ideas” of the society, then the dominant ideology
that popular fiction reinscribes in it has to be the ideology of the ruling class which it uses so
as to achieve hegemony. Leo Lowenthal condemns Popular Fiction as ‘purveyor of false
consciousness’ primarily because he thinks that the role of popular fiction is limited to the
reproduction of ‘false consciousness’ as men, because of their limited mode of activity, are
unable to comprehend the real social contradictions and consequently tend to find solutions in
discursive level/ mental level which conceal/ misrepresent the contradictions, in the process
serving the interests of the ruling class. Lowenthal assumes Popular Fiction as such a literary
artifact which seeks to find solutions to the social contradictions in wishful utopian
reproduction. As Popular Fiction fails to bring forth the social contradictions and merely
reproduces them, serving the interests of the ruling class, therefore Popular Fiction has no
other function, according to Lowenthal, but to serve the interests of the ruling class.
Lowenthal in his book Literature, Popular Culture and Society claims that since the
separation of literature into two distinct fields – Art and Commodity; commodity or popular
literary artifact cannot be taken seriously to study society as the real social contradictions are
concealed in the process of constructing these texts as the purpose of Popular Fiction is to
eschew/ evade the social contradictions. Moreover, he thinks that Popular Fiction is
significant to the extent of understanding the social change that leads to the separation of
literature into art and commodity. Pawling finds Lowenthal’s approach ‘reductionist’ as
Lowenthal simply thinks that capitalistic mode of economy or market economy has adverse
impact on this form of literary reproduction. According to Pawling, the emergence of market
economy has significant results in the relationship between the author and the readers but that
does not signify that it has simpler implications for the ‘mass’ fiction.
For John Cawelti, Popular Fiction is “intrinsically more ideological” than elite fiction as
it serves the function of reproducing ‘cultural consensus’ as opposed to the mimetic (elite)
fiction whose supposed role is to make the readers confront the problematic and contradictory
reality of the world. According to Cawelti, “the tensions, ambiguities and frustrations of
ordinary experience” are glossed over by Popular Fiction in such a manner by “magic
pigments of adventure, romance and mystery” that the problematic reality is not confronted
by the readers (the mass). Thus, the social tension is managed by popular fiction in a way so
as to promote cultural stability “by assimilating new interests into the conventional
imaginative structures.”
But such a ‘functionalist’ reading of popular fiction extolling the consensual function is
too simplistic and uncritical as culture is not such a homogenous entity as Cawelti thinks it to
be. Moreover, the readers are not passive recipients of the culture, but have a definite role to
play. Cawelti’s approach of Popular fiction being formulaic is similarly problematic as
Pawling points out by quoting Patrick Parrinder who argued that there is no place in
Cawelti’s scheme for “a literature of genuine innovation.” Using Theodor Adorno’s argument
“no art can entirely dispense with them” (stereotypes/ formula), Pawling points out how if

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popular fiction is formulaic then elite fiction cannot claim that it is beyond the stereotype or
formula.
Pawling then goes on to discuss how Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s
notion of “common sense ideology” as central to the understanding of PF. By this time, you
must have realized that PF is ideological in every sense of the term as any literary text
necessarily will be an ideological manifestation of the society which it is portraying. But in
case of Popular Fiction, which is written with the objective of salability in mind the dominant
ideology of the society is represented in a fashion which makes it easily acceptable to the
people, and yet at the same time, it needs to deal with utopian elements for the sake of wish
fulfilment of the readers.
Gramsci therefore believes that it is the commonsense ideology which is often
represented in PF. The ideology thus represented is so common sensical that often the readers
are unable to notice it even as an ideology as they live by it in their everyday life. It can also
be termed as “lived ideology.” Earlier, we have discussed how the genre of thrillers,
especially James Bond books and movies represent racism, patriarchy and champions
capitalism. But when one read a Bond book or watches a Bond movie, one does not even
look at these as ideologies as one lives by them in everyday life. They are so common
sensical to our everyday existence for the majority of the people in the society that we do not
even see them as ideological.
Self-Check Questions
1. Who defines Culture as “a way of life”?
(a) Christopher Pawling
(b) Raymond Williams
(c) F. R. Leavis
(d) Matthew Arnold
2. Who states that PF is “a purveyor of false consciousness”?
(a) Cawelti
(b) Lowenthal
(c) Gramsci
(d) Raymond Williams
3. What is lived ideology, according to Gramsci?
4. In what ways do you think PF is ideological?

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1.4 Review: Popular Fiction: Literature or Commodity
“… Para literature occupies the space outside the literary enclosure, as a
forbidden, taboo and perhaps degraded product against which the ‘self’ of
literature proper is forged.” – Mark Angenot
“… a discipline which refuses to take into account ninety percent or more of
what constitutes its domain seems to me not only to have large zones of
blindness but also to run serious risks of distorted vision in the small zone it
focuses on (so called high literature).” – Darko Suvin
Such is the instability of the premises on which stands the study of popular fiction. Or to
probe the issue further, it is the same premise on which the so-called elite literature is
constructed with it having supposed academic value as against the negligible status of
Popular fiction. The very epithet employed in the perusal of this expressive manifestation of
popular culture is more often than not, the vortex of a dialectic contention. To an adherent of
the old (and conventional) school of literariness, Popular Fiction (PF) is a problematic issue,
considered more as a banal scar on the face of real literature. PF is relegated to the status of
‘Para literature’ and perceived as a minor field of study. It encounters this kind of entrenched
resistance chiefly on account of the fact that literary theorists ‘play it safe’ constrained within
the gridlines of the established and consolidated intellectual paradigms – an act of adherence
that leaves little room for much innovation, modulation or even exploration.
The American Journal of Popular Culture brands most of the work on popular literature
(a major chunk of which is fiction) as ‘secondary untheorized and eclectic’. A surmise such
as this almost bordering on offensiveness, definitely circumscribes ‘second rate’ exhortations
endorsing the primary objective of ‘salability’; discourses that leave scant space for ‘serious
socio-historic’ or literary exegesis. An instance that so denigrates the literary worth of
popular literature would be the authoring of ‘pulp fiction’. If one treads the footprints of
literature back into the past in the quest for it origin, one would certainly discover that
literature has had its roots in the evolution of language – serving the function of satiating
mankind’s elementary necessity of intercommunication. The function of communication
having been successfully fructified after a time, language bred literature as an indulged
offspring, to take on the role of a vehicle for the exposition of human glory. Soon, literature
was conferred upon with an additional and more arduous responsibility of channelising and
directing the episodes of human cultural finesse. It was at this juncture that literature
diversified into other modes of aesthetic assertions such as art and cinema. Literature now
coupled with its cousins became the altar of communicative practice, with social and
historical roots. This is the very reason on account of which, alluding to Suvin’s belief,
literature of the masses, namely popular literature/fiction, cannot be ignored and be deprived
of a pedestal in the hallowed institution of (contemporary) literature.
From one standpoint, it would not be purportedly blasphemous to opine that in a way, PF
has started digging its own grave. In its effort to intervene into an existing social set up –

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rather than assume the stance of a chronicling observer – with a self-sanctioned authority to
modify and realign the system, all it has managed to accomplish is to circumnavigate around
a rather turbidly problematic core of direct didacticism and sermonization, concealed behind
a dangerously fallacious cloak of unwarranted fantasy and piquancy. Thereby, PF glances off
the gloves of traditional concerns of both sociology and literary criticism. Thus, though PF
seeks to excavate and then renovate social structure, this honest intention gets misdirected in
the haze of misassumption to finally follow a diversion. The net result is an uncomfortable
dichotomy between ‘external portrayal’ and the ‘motif embedded in the text.’ Thus, popular
literature gets split into ‘a socio-historical external context’ and the pure and still undefiled
centre of the literary text …” (Suvin)
Interestingly, the narrative structure of PF commendably alleviates to an extent the
inherent crisis of this dichotomy. The ideological undercurrent that flows in the narrative
technique of PF often ‘provides a crucial link between the external reality of social
experience and the internal meaning which is derived there from. The design the PF author
employs through his narrative technique to conciliate the two extremities of the dichotomy is
to text out certain ideological propositions which forms the basis of literary ‘discourse’
(Pierre Macharey). Such ideological trials are carried out very intentionally, on the actions
and motives of the characters. This in turn reveals either the contradictions or the acceptance
of these imposed ideological dictates, by the characters constituting the production. These
outcomes then enunciate themselves in an often abrupt ‘magical resolution’ or some kind of
uncalled for tragedy.
Another quandary that PF finds itself stranded in – and one that possibly possesses a
more serious character than the friction between ‘external context’ and ‘internal worth; -- is
the denial of a classification, technically a ‘canonization’ to be conferred upon PF, by the
supercilious guardians of ‘high’ literature. As referred to earlier in the essay, Pf is often
perceived as some ‘low brow’ fabrication with the cardinal aspiration to excite and maze its
readership using superfluous contrivances of characterization, imagery and plot. Cawelti
terms this kind of literature as ‘formulaic’ as opposed to ‘mimetic’ literature. He views
formulaic literature as an ‘artistry of escape’ from a mundane everyday existence to create
another ‘ideally unreal space which realist elements of disorder, ambiguity and uncertainty
(hallmarks of mimetic literature) have been deleted. The unanimous consensus among the
literary theorists is that PF is unwaveringly directed at the sole intention of ‘selling the stuff.’
According to them, what PF eventually seeks to achieve is to promulgate and subsequently
propagate and consolidate among its readers a false consciousness. They uphold the opinion
that PF is principally an eminently strategized endeavour to market literature (as an art form)
as commodity. Leo Lowenthal says – “… since the separation of literature into two distinct
fields of art and commodity in the course of the eighteenth century, the popular literary
products can make no claim to insight and truth …” (Leo Lowenthal, “Literature Popular
Culture and Society”). Hence the denial of a category, a canon, a genre, to popular fiction.
Frederic Jameson has noted – “Genres are essentially contracts between a writer and his (sic)
readers …”
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 On similar lines Claudio Guillen calls genres as ‘literary institutions’ which like other
institutions of social life are based on tacit agreements or contracts. In accordance with these
views, one notes with disdain that such a contract between a PF author and his readers has
been hurriedly vested into redundancy by the proponents of the already exiting canons on the
grounds already discussed. What has been very surreptitiously yet methodically overlooked is
the fact that PF is the literature of the masses; that it is the upholder of contemporary
consciousness. A case in point would be the amazing success of the ‘Shaft’ series in the
1970s – an era that witnessed a resurgence of black (Afro-American) consciousness. Another
instance would be based somewhere around the timeframe of the mind 1960s which
witnessed the rising of the counterculture that sought to transform existing social
relationships looking at a goal of political change. This social emergence found expression in
the unparalleled popularity of writers of fantasy, notably Tolkien, Peake, Burroughs and
others who acquired cult status among the followers of this counterculture. The amazing
success of these anti-realists may be perceived in literary equivalence, as an alteration of
consciousness. We may, therefore, safely conclude that what may today be held in contempt
viewed through condescending eyes, may tomorrow become the a la mode against which the
credibility of literary configurations will be ascertained. How true this conjecture is, can be
attested in the words of Lowenthal himself – “ … yet, since they (popular Literature) have
become a powerful force in the life of modern man, their symbols cannot be over-estimated
as diagnostic tools for studying man in contemporary society.”
Zeroing in on the question of whether PF (Formulaic Fiction) being a generic form of
production, is imperatively cast in a definite, stereotypical model in contrast to the originality
of ‘elite’ (mimetic) literature, one may argue that the most avant-garde form of literary
subversion inevitably sets up generic pattern after a while (Patrick Parrinder). genres (or
Canons) are not unimpeachable. When Macharey began his work on Jules Verne the later
was not even recognized as being an author worth a literary analysis. In the wake of
Macharey’s monumental research, this misconstrued notion was wholly discarded. A canon is
a historically evolving edifice and consequently opens to revision. Literary history
corroborates this fact. More than anything else PF being a better chronicle of human
progression than any other canonized form of literature, it deserved a better ratification than
what is presently accorded to it.
1.5 Let’s Sum Up
In this unit, we have learnt that –
 Christopher Pawling’s essay “Popular Fiction Ideology or Utopia?” deals with
divergent issues of popular fiction but the primary objective of Pawling is to establish
the premise of Popular fiction as a serious branch of study and not just a “significant
other” on which the identity of English literature as an intellectual discipline is
dependent.
 Lowenthal assumes Popular Fiction as such a literary artifact which seeks to find
solutions to the social contradictions in wishful utopian reproduction. As Popular
10
 Fiction fails to bring forth the social contradictions and merely reproduces them,
serving the interests of the ruling class, therefore Popular Fiction has no other
function, according to Lowenthal, but to serve the interests of the ruling class.
 For John Cawelti, Popular Fiction is “intrinsically more ideological” than elite fiction
as it serves the function of reproducing ‘cultural consensus’ as opposed to the mimetic
(elite) fiction whose supposed role is to make the readers confront the problematic
and contradictory reality of the world.
 Gramsci believes that it is the common sense ideology which is often represented in
PF. The ideology thus represented is so common sensical that often the readers are
unable to notice it even as an ideology as they live by it in their everyday life. It can
also be termed as “lived ideology.”
1.6 University Questions
1. How does Christopher Pawling defend Popular Fiction in his essay “Popular Fiction:
Ideology or Utopia”?
2. Do you feel Popular Fiction can be studied academically? Give reasons why academic
study of popular fiction is a necessary step for cultural studies.
3. In what ways the dichotomy of utopia and ideology are being dealt with in the realm
of popular fiction? Discuss with reference to Christopher Pawling’s essay “Popular
Fiction: Ideology or Utopia”.
4. Write short notes on –
(a) Popular Fiction as formulaic
(b) Popular Fiction as purveyor of false consciousness
(c) Popular Fiction as Para literature
(d) Popular vs. Elite debate
(e) Popular Fiction as the “other” to Elite fiction
(f) Popular Fiction and common-sense Ideology
(g) Popular Culture and Bestsellers
(h) Study of Popular Fiction and Sales of Books
5. What is the contribution of Antonio Gramsci in the study of Popular Fiction? How
does Christopher Pawling use Gramsci in his essay “Popular Fiction: Ideology or
Utopia”?
1.7 Recommended Readings
 Storey, John (2001) Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, Prentice
Hall, England.

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 Williams, Raymond (1983) Keywords, London: Fontana.
 Christopher Pawling, ‘Popular Fiction: Ideology or Utopia?’, in Popular Fiction and
Social Change, ed. Christopher Pawling. London: Macmillan, 1984.
 Cawelti, John G (1976) Adventure, Mystery, Romance: Formula Stories as Art and
Popular Culture, University of Chicago press, Chicago.
 Ashley, Bob (1989) Edited, The Study of Popular Fiction: A Source Book, London,
Pinter Publishers.

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 Section-2

Darko Suvin , TzvetanTodorov and Felicity Hughes

2.1 Introduction

Living in the twenty first century, many of us are fond of Sci-Fi movies and tend to believe
that they are part of our culture, though when it comes to the study of Science Fiction (Sci-Fi
or SF) in academic terms it is often thought that there is nothing much to study there as it
deals with a fantastic realm of existence and is not true in any way and therefore cannot be
studied critically with the aim of understanding the world and its ways. This kind of a belief
that SF cannot be studied and taught in a critical fashion is what made scholars like Darko
Suvin state the ideological manifestation within the SF texts which makes them potent for
academic and critical involvement and thinking. The essay “On Teaching Science Fiction
Critically” is an attempt by Darko Suvin to look at the core issues dealing with science fiction
which makes it so popular. He emphasizes on the ways in which SF texts should be studied
with the same academic rigour as that of an elite fiction text. The reasons for the same is
explored in the essay “On Teaching Science Fiction Critically” and will be discussed in the
course of this unit. Apart from Suvin, Todorov’s essay “The Typology of Detective Fiction”
and Felicity Hughes’s essay “Children Literature: Theory and Practice” are also being dealt
in this Unit which deals with Detective Fiction and Children’s literature respectively. At this
juncture, it is advised that you read the original essays to familiarize yourself with the ideas
that the essayists discussed in the essay.
2.2 Learning Objectives
In this Unit, we will learn about –
 Science Fiction and Darko Suvin’s essay “On Teaching Science Fiction Critically”
 Todorov’s essay “The Typology of Detective Fiction”
 The Genre of Detective Fiction and its typical characteristics
 Felicity Hughes Essay “Children Literature: Theory and Practice”
2.3 Darko Suvin: “On Teaching Science Fiction Critically”
In Third Section of the paper Popular Fiction, you have come across five short stories which
are all SF. The study of the same has already made you realize that SF is not just about
fantasy along with science but has a bigger manifestation in our understanding of the world.
The stories as well as the Sci-Fi movies that you watch often makes this genre a very
common topic for most of you and probably also is something that you are able to relate to
quite easily. Apparently, it seems that the term “Science Fiction” is an oxymoron as science
is supposedly dealing with the real things, with the interpretations of the real world in an

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objective manner and in understanding the ways in which the world can be advanced through
a scientific temper and technological advancements; whereas fiction deals with the
imaginative, fantastical elements of our mind with the primary objective of providing us
pleasure of reading (novels, etc.) or watching movies or the likes.
The first section of the essay “On Teaching Science Fiction Critically” is named as “A
Right to Daydream: A Duty to Daydream Critically” which suggest that SF is basically a
“narrative fiction” which represents “an articulated and collective daydream” as reading SF
critically means “to show realistically both the now-possible (believable and existing)and the
now-impossible but forever-not-impossible (believable though not existing here and now)
relations between people in a material world.” Thus, Suvin starts from the basic premise of
SF which is to understand that SF deals with a certain kind of fantastical extension of science
which borders on the realm of impossible or nearly impossible. But for that matter, all
literature deals not with the realm of the supposed real; but with “what should be” (Aristotle,
Poetics) and if literature pursues “the ideal” or the impossible and if poetic truth cannot be
related to the truth of this reality then what is the point of studying literature. To answer this
question, Suvin states – “Looked at as a whole … the basic purpose of fiction is to make
human life more manageable, more meaningful and more pleasant, by means of selecting
some believable human relationships for playful consideration and understanding …”
The Second Section of the essay “On Teaching Science Fiction Critically” is named as
“On Para literature as an Open Tension between Ideology and Utopia”. Probably the name
rings in your ears the name of the essay by Christopher Pawling which we have dealt with in
Unit I, where the same words “Ideology” and “Utopia” are being used, suggesting to us the
fact that in the study of popular fiction or SF, these words and the “tension” between these
concepts have far reaching consequences. Suvin is of the opinion that “As a rule, utopian
presentation has to be explicit since it presents an alternative, while ideological presentation
will best be served by remaining implicit, as an unargued premise that this is how things are,
were and will be. Both the cognitively utopian and the mystifying horizons are intimately
interwoven in most stories, often in the same paragraph or indeed the same sentence.” Thus,
the tension between ideology and utopia is manifest in all literatures and in case of Popular
fiction or SF it is not reduced in any manner, leading to it being the battleground of
“understanding and mystification.”
To understand this further, Suvin then goes on to discuss how writers from being a
patronized lot and talking to a small group of homogenized audience/readers became subject
to the market forces when in the nineteenth century, there started a popularity of supposedly
cheap “reading materials” which were mass produced for an impersonal heterogenous mass
market. Writers became subject to commerce and economic gatekeepers (promoter,
publisher, agent) and started getting pittance for their writings. These writings were then
derogated by the cultural elites starting from Matthew Arnold by stating that “real literature
was not accessible to all” leading to the binaries of literature and para literature, elite versus
popular, came into being. In that sense “Culture became quite openly a mode of domination”

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when it was assumed that a certain degree of education, erudition as well as social and
economic status are prerequisite for assessing what constitutes literature. (In Unit 1, we have
discussed how the growth of the discipline of English literature as an academic discipline also
let to the derogatory state of Popular fiction and thus denigration of whatever is read by the
mass, working class, women and children as not fit for academic exercise and thus paving the
path for elite vs. popular and also an understanding of culture as whatever is best written and
thought about).
Another aspect that Darko Suvin states in this section is that when this kind of dichotomy
between the elite and the popular was in the process of being constructed, there evolved a
kind of writing which primarily dealt with fantasy “which allowed the readers to express their
hopes, dreams, aggressions and lusts in symbolic terms.” And within this realm Popular
Fiction as well as SF belongs. SF is a genre which manifests in itself use on scientific
premises often in a fantastical manner in a narrative which is highly seeped into the reality
(read ideological structures) of this world and therefore it is often suggested that “cognitive
estrangement” is a necessary means through which the SF is usually understood. We cognize
some aspects of a SF narrative with the realities of this world and some elements (especially
the scientific pretensions and fantasy) is estranged from the reality so take us to a world
which seems too far away from us. This contrapuntal amalgamation of both these opposing
things make SF so appealing, similar to what we have discussed in Popular Fiction when we
discussed following Antonio Gramsci that it is the most advanced technological innovations
(often yet to come) are being put together with the core traditional values that a narrative/ a
text/ a film becomes a best-seller as it appeals to the popular sensibilities.
Review any text of popular culture and you will notice that somewhere the text is highly
grounded in the ideological structures of this world which makes the readers/ viewers identify
with the narrative. SF similarly is structured in a similar manner where behind the scientific
fantasy, there is a connection with the everyday reality of our world. As students of literature
engaging ourselves critically with the texts/ narratives/ films, we need to look both at the
fantastical science and the ideological aspects to make sense of how SF narrative appeals to
the public.
Only when we will be able to critically engage ourselves with the SF texts and look
beyond the apparent and see how they are potent ideologically that we will be truly engage
with them academically. Our critical gaze towards these texts need to unearth the ideologies
manifest and make us relate it to the popularity of these texts. These days, the popularity of
SF has reached to such a level that many of the children’s literature also deals with SF.
Self-Check Questions
(A) SF, according to Suvin, is an open tension between
i. Utopia and Ideology
ii. Science and fiction

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 iii. Literature and science
iv. Ideology and Literature
(B) What is the basic purpose of SF, according to Darko Suvin?
(C) Darko Suvin calls fiction as “articulated and __________daydream.”
(a) Automated
(b) Magical
(c) Collective
(d) Individual
(D) The term Science Fiction is a ____________
(a) Simile
(b) Oxymoron
(c) Metaphor
(d) All of above

2.4 Tzvetan Todorov “The Typology of Detective Fiction”

Tzvetan Todorov is a central figure of French structuralism, who advocated the scientific
study of narrative, which is modeled on linguistics, for which he coined the term narratology.
He developed the narrative theory of the twentieth century Russian formalists, to establish a
universal "grammar" of narrative. In "Structural Analysis of Narrative" (1969), Todorov
presents a manifesto for the narratological approach. In the essay we have in our course “The
Typology of Detective Fiction”, Todorov deals with the way the genre of detective fiction
works within the parameters of certain rules. Knowing a genre is often one of the best means
to understand a piece of work, but often great works of literature surpasses the genre and
achieves greater heights. The essay “The Typology of Detective Fiction” will make us
understand the genre of detective fiction in a much more coherent way.
Your reading of “The Typology of Detective Fiction” probably has made you realize that
the essay deals with figuring out the structure of the genre of detective fiction. It gives us a
set of rules that the detective novel usually deals with and when one knows these set of rules
often it helps in critically analyzing the novel in a much better fashion. Often knowing the
rules makes us also understand the way a narrative of a detective novel progresses and why it
does what it does.
Todorov starts the essay by defining the contours of what it means to study a genre and
how and why often study of genre is avoided by scholars and critics. It is found that when
one knows a genre and its structure and rules, it may often not make us enjoy a piece of
literary work in the same manner as one usually does. But at the same time, this is also true

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that when one reads few works of the same genre, one naturally comes to know a rough
structure of that genre leading to a different kind of approach to understanding literature. For
example, we have all read tragedies and know the basic rules of tragedy – that a tragedy
should deal with the rise and fall of a character which usually is caused by the tragic flaw
(hamartia) or the fate. Apart from these, Aristotle had given few more norms of tragedy such
as it should have catharsis (purgation of the feelings of pity and fear); that the protagonist of a
tragedy should be a noble character; that the plot of the novel should have three unities (time,
place and action) and that it should be accompanied by music and rhetoric and that the comic
and tragic elements should not be mixed with each other. Knowing these norms of tragedy
often is helpful for us as students of literature to categorize a piece of work as a tragedy and
often we also tend to say how a play has followed the norms or have broken them. For
example, William Shakespeare in all his great tragedies have broken the Aristotelian norms
and have created masterpieces.
This makes Todorov state that “the literary masterpiece does not enter any genre save
perhaps its own.” What he means is that each literary masterpiece is a genre on its own; as it
does not follow the norms of the genre, but moreover creates norms of its own which is
difficult to imitate and create another one. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a revenge tragedy, is a
play about revenge; but more than that it is Hamlet. A second Hamlet is not possible and
when an indecisive character similar to Hamlet is being constructed in T. S. Eliot’s Prufrock,
he had to say “I am not Hamlet, nor I am meant to be” as a second Hamlet is not possible. So,
in case of literary masterpieces, according to Todorov what is created is unique in such a
manner that it does not fit a formula.
But when we come to Popular Fiction, we have already seen in the Unit on Christopher
Pawling that it is formulaic in nature and Popular narratives usually tend to follow the norms
and structure of the genre. Todorov goes to the extent of saying that “the masterpiece of
popular literature is precisely the book which best fits its genre.” What he means is that in
case of popular literature, a masterpiece is one which follows the norms of the genre closely
and does not deviate much from its structure or pattern that is so typical of the genre.
A Detective Fiction usually has two stories –
(a) The story of the crime
(b) The story of detection
These two stories are merged to form the plot of a detective novel. As we progress with the
story of the detection which usually a friend or an acquaintance of the detective usually
narrates, we are gives clues (often false clues) about the criminal and thus the tussle/ tension/
suspense between the narrative and the reader continues. The essence of the suspense is
whether the reader will be able to gauge the criminal before the detective tells who s/he is.
Based on these parameters most Detective Fiction, Todorov proposes the following structure
of a Detective Fiction –

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 1. “The novel must have at most one detective and one criminal, and at least one victim
(a corpse).
2. The culprit must not be a professional criminal, must not be the detective, must kill
for personal reasons.
3. Love has no place in detective fiction.
4. The culprit must have a certain importance (a) in life: not be a butler or a
chambermaid and (b) in the book: must be one of the main characters.
5. Everything must be explained rationally; the fantastic is not admitted.
6. There is no place for descriptions nor for psychological analyses.
7. With regard to information about the story, the following homology must be
observed: “author : reader : criminal : detective.”
8. Banal situations and solutions must be avoided.” (Source: Todorov “The Typology of
Detective Fiction”)
Self-Check Questions
a. How many stories and how many plots are there in a Detective Fiction?
b. What according to Todorov is the criteria of masterpiece of Popular
Literature?

2.5 Felicity A. Hughes: “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice”

The units on Sukumar’s Roy’s poems and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass
probably has given you a fair notion of what children’s literature is all about and probably
you must also have read few novels and other works as a child and your acquaintance with
what is generally described and categorized as Children’s Literature has been fairly good.
Still when we are dealing with Children’s Literature as a genre within the realm of Popular
fiction paper, we need to understand the politics inclusion of Children’s literature in the
category of Popular Fiction. The essay by Felicity Hughes, “Children Literature: Theory and
Practice” deals with this and more issues and is a must reading for getting a great
understanding of the Children’s Literature.
If you have acquainted yourself with the essay “Children Literature: Theory and
Practice” by now then, you probably have realized that the essay deals with the way
canonization of Children’s Literature is being done within the academic and publishing
circles and how it came into being as a significant ‘other’ to the elite literature, as being
discussed in the essay by Christopher Pawling too. The arguments that led to the evolution of
the popular fiction as “para literature” or as ‘the other’ is more or less similar to that of
bracketing children’s Literature too as the other.
A child is usually seen as an innocent creature and in the early nineteenth century there
was a general tendency among the Romantic Poets in England, especially, William
Wordsworth, William Blake and others celebrating the child-like innocence. But at the same

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time, it was seen as a kind of innocence which can be corrupted by the “experiences” of these
world and therefore the need to gain “supreme innocence” by going through the phase of
“experience” (William Blake, “Songs of Innocence and Experience”). But as we move further
in the Victorian Age (you probably has come across some idea of the Victorian Age in your
units on Lewis Carroll), the colonial-industrial-capitalist society of the West started viewing
child to be “inferior versions of the adult” who needs to be taught the values and norms of the
civilization and “Culture” to incorporate him into the folds of civilization.
This kind of notion of a child obviously tends to believe that a child cannot thus have a
“taste” which makes him or her be competent enough to decide what is good or bad for him.
Therefore, what a child enjoys in a literary book (usually “fantasy”) is not what should be
considered erudite and thus supposedly cannot be part of the so called “elite” literature which
is usually considered to be taken for academic engagement. This kind of a belief is what
made the canonizers of literature take a position of stamping Children’s Literature as “the
other” as opposed to Elite.
This does not mean that there are not enough Children’s Literature existing and that what
is considered to be “the other” is but a negligent aspect which can be marginalized. On the
other hand, this supposed “other” is vast enough as Children are one of the greatest
consumers of books produced by the publishing industry. This vast area of literary production
cannot be overlooked in anyway and thus there is a need not only to accept the genre of
“Children’s Literature”, not just as an “other”, but as an equally significant part of the
literature. It is with this ambition of establishing Children’s Literature in its proper pedestal
that writers like Felicity Hughes have made attempts to argue and fight for the case of
Children’s literature as well as theorize to a certain extent to provide a solid base on which
and from which literature usually read by children can be defended and acknowledged as
rightfully academic too.
In other words, it can be said that even though writers of Children’s literature have
considerable achievements in spite of a lack of critical and theoretical support only goes on to
prove that children’s literature has a considerable space in the history of literature even if the
theory of children’s literature is “in a state of confusion.” Felicity A. Hughes in her essay
“Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice” poses the challenge to the critics by pointing out
how children’s literature is relegated to the realm of popular fiction, as a ‘significant other’ so
as to constitute novel as a serious form of art, as an artifact which is not merely for “family
reading,” but an intellectual discipline.
To establish the argument, Hughes points out how the crisis of the novel in 1880’s led
scholars to ponder over the rapid rise of the readership of the novel, which failed to provide
accolade to the novel as a serious genre. Compared to poetry and drama, novel having no
“distinguished classical ancestry” was stigmatized as a “low” form of art leading critics to
promote “a heightened, more serious conception of novel as art” (Walter Allen). Henry James
in The Art of Fiction “tried to dissociate novel from its family readership and redirect it
toward what was seen as art’s traditional elite audience of educated adult males outside the

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home, at court, the coffee house or the club.” In other words, if novel had to gain some status
as a serious art then it had to be “at the cost of being unsuitable for women and children.,” as
it would feared that popularity of the novel will weaken the chances of finding the elite
readership.
The common conjecture in aesthetic theory is that children cannot have aesthetic
pleasure as it requires some the degree of intelligence and discrimination to be experienced,
and children are thought to lacking in them. Thus, the arbitrary exclusion of children’s
literature from the class of serious literature was a deliberate attempt to construct the domain
of elite fiction, leading to children’s literature being classed as a branch of popular fiction.
Thus, the binary opposition of detachment – involvement as the proper attitude of the reader
in reading a novel became a criterion? Whereas Henry James in his The Art of Fiction
emphasized on “Realism” from the writers and detachment from the readers; R. L Stevenson
admired novels which made demands of ‘sympathy’ or ‘involvement.’ Moore, Booth and
others of the twentieth century even emphasized on the importance of the objectivity both on
the part of the novelist and the reader as a principle as that would help establish novel as a
serious genre. In the process of doing so, “class, sex and age were conflated as causes of a
supposed inability to appreciate the best in art and literature, those millions to whom taste is
but an obscure, confused, immediate instinct.”
One of the effects of acceptance of realism as a standard was that Fantasy was
immediately déclassé. E M Forster emphasizes in his Aspects of the Novel and in his lectures
how “fantasy is so ephemeral that critical inspection would destroy it.” This prejudice against
fantasy in the early twentieth century made it a point that any writer of fantasy is forced into
writing for children. Another inevitable consequence of the way the category of Children’s
literature came into being was that certain restraint has been imposed on children’s writers in
the realist tradition when it comes to topics such as terror, politics and sex. Political topics of
class and race have been recently been self-consciously injected into children’s realist fiction.
Your reading of Children’s literature in this course – Lewis Carroll or/and Sukumar Ray,
as well as Felicity Hughes’ essay “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice” probably has
put you in some kind of firm standing in your understanding of the premise on which
Children’s literature can be justified to be good enough for academic and critical
engagements. You probably have realized that children too live within a socio-political and
cultural world and their minds also are in some ways receptive of the ideas and ideologies
prevalent in the times in which they are living. So, not only do their minds receive those ideas
from the society as well as the caretakers (read parents), but at the same time their minds are
formed in the process to process information and ideas in a similar process.
For example, while reading Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice
Saw There, you have seen that Alice’s looking glass world is but a manifestation of the
Victorian society – the capitalist venture of moving up the social ladder (Alice’s journey from
a pawn to a queen) the money-minded society (where everything is equated in monetary
terms when Alice is in train), the calculative and manipulative society (the chess game), the

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competitive individualism (Lion and Unicorn episode as well as Tweedledum and
Tweedledee episode) – all point to the fact that Alice’s mind cannot but avoid the Victorian
upbringing as she manifests all those aspects of the Victorian society; and yet at the same
time, Alice’s mind makes a critique of them by questioning some of these parameters of the
Victorian society. The “questioning” mind of a child does not accept the society and its
norms as it is, as an adult does; and therefore s/he usually questions the very parameter of the
society as well as the adult world.
It is this “questioning” aspect of the children which is being employed by various writers
to question the validity, logic as well as existence those aspects of society which are never
being questioned by the adult world. This aspect of children’s literature is usually being
overlooked by critics as they do not want to accept the fact that their world and its premises
can be questioned. To justify that children’s literature is not a valid means to look at and to
understand reality, the element of “fantasy” in children’s literature is usually highlighted and
it is being said that fantasy cannot but be a valid means to gaining knowledge as well as
questioning the society and the adult order.
Julia Briggs comments that “Children’s books are written for a special readership but not
normally for members of that readership; both the writing and quite often the buying of them,
is carried out by adult non-members on behalf of child members” (1989: 4). Therefore, to
define children’s literature is one of the most difficult tasks as what children read is often
determined and decided by adult members taking care of children. Mostly children do not
pick up a book by themselves; their choice is governed by what adult think to be justified for
them. In other words, the adults decide which books the child should read and why?
Moreover, often the adult decision is not based on what is there inside the book, but on the
information that the adult has received about the book from various sources, mostly from the
publisher who has categorized the book under the section of Children’s literature probably
with a particular motive. Therefore, what comes under children literature is also tricky as
John Rowe Townsend says that what is considered as a children’s book is decided by the
publisher – “In the short run it appears that, for better or worse, the publisher decides. If he
puts a book on the children’s list, it will be reviewed as a children’s book and will be read by
children (or young people), if it is read at all. If he puts it on the adult list, it will not – or at
least not immediately.” (1980: 197)
Moreover as there is a want of theoretical paradigm on Children’s fiction, as pointed out
by Felicity Hughes in the essay “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice” it becomes
easier for people to categorize under children’s literature whatever their whims and fancies
decide Children’s literature to be. It is not that Children’s books are few; on the contrary
there are many but what is lacking is a theoretical and critical paradigm which would provide
Children’s literature the place in literary world as it should be.

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Self-Check Questions
A. What, according to Felicity Hughes, failed to provide accolade to the novel as a
serious genre?
B. What according to Felicity Hughes are the reasons of prejudice against fantasy?

2.6 Let’s Sum Up

In this Unit, we have learnt that –
 SF is a genre which uses scientific premises often in a fantastical manner in a
narrative which is highly seeped into the reality (read ideological structures) of this
world and therefore it is often suggested that “cognitive estrangement” is a necessary
means through which the SF is usually understood.
 Only when we will be able to critically engage ourselves with the SF texts and look
beyond the apparent and see how they are potent ideologically that we will truly
engage with them academically.
 “The Typology of Detective Fiction” gives us a set of rules that the detective novel
usually deals with and when one knows these set of rules often it helps in critically
analyzing the novel in a much better fashion.
 Todorov goes to the extent of saying that “the masterpiece of popular literature is
precisely the book which best fits its genre.” What he means is that in case of popular
literature, a masterpiece is one which follows the norms of the genre closely and does
not deviate much from its structure or pattern that is so typical of the genre.
 Felicity A. Hughes in her essay “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice”
challenges the critics by pointing out that children’s literature which is relegated to
the realm of popular fiction, is the ‘significant other’ and must be viewed as a serious
form of art, as an artifact which is not merely for “family reading,” but an intellectual
discipline.
 There is a want of theoretical paradigm in Children’s fiction (Felicity Hughes in the
essay “Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice”) which makes it easier for people
to categorize it under children’s literature based on their whims and fancies of what
Children’s literature should be.
2.7 University Questions
1. Do you agree with Todorov’s views in “The Typology of Detective Fiction”? Give
reasons for your answer.
2. Fantasy has a great role to play in Children’s literature. Do you agree? Critically
comment on fantasy with reference to Felicity Hughes essay “Children’s Literature:
Theory and Practice.”

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 3. In what ways do you think SF can be beneficial in our academic study?
4. Teaching SF is significant as it is ideologically very challenging. Do you agree with
the statement? Give reasons based on Darko Suvin’s essay “On Teaching Science
Fiction Critically”
2.8 Recommended Readings
 Felicity Hughes, ‘Children’s Literature: Theory and Practice’, ELH 45. 1978, pp. 542-
62.
 Darko Suvin, ‘On Teaching SF Critically’, in Positions and Presuppositions in
Science Fiction. London: Macmillan, pp. 86-96.
 Tzvetan Todorov. ‘The Typology of Detective Fiction’, trans. Richard Howard, in
The Poetics of Prose. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.

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