On one side stand the forces of cultural centralisation and stabilisation: the “official strata”, unitary language, the literary canon and so on.
On the other side stands the decentralising influence of popular culture: popular festivity and collective ridicule, literary parody, and the anti-canonic novel.
The rise of the novel is correlated with the collapse of antique unity and the breaking down of cultural boundaries. Where the official culture developed a canon of poetic genres which posited a rarified language in opposition to the common spoken language, presented a monolithically serious worldview and epic accounts of a golden age and heroic beginnings,
the novel parodies these features, ridiculing the official culture’s claims to universal validity and the ossified conventionality of canonic forms and language.
On the other side stands the decentralising influence of popular culture: popular festivity and collective ridicule, literary parody, and the anti-canonic novel.
The rise of the novel is correlated with the collapse of antique unity and the breaking down of cultural boundaries. Where the official culture developed a canon of poetic genres which posited a rarified language in opposition to the common spoken language, presented a monolithically serious worldview and epic accounts of a golden age and heroic beginnings,
the novel parodies these features, ridiculing the official culture’s claims to universal validity and the ossified conventionality of canonic forms and language.
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