Introduction: Popular Fiction: Ideology or Utopia?

Abstract

Although there has been a growth of interest in popular fiction over the last few years, one could not claim that it has been established in schools or colleges as a central component of literary studies. The English lecturer who proposes a course in this area may well be told that it would be difficult to find space on the timetable for such a ‘minor’ field of study, although the same objections do not seem to apply when one of his/her colleagues suggests yet another option in seventeenth-century poetry. A course dealing with popular genres such as science fiction or thrillers is, apparently, a luxury which the department cannot afford. ‘It would be nice if we had the time, of course, but …’ Such entrenched resistance is not wholly surprising. Most intellectual disciplines harbour conservative as well as innovative tendencies. Once a field of study has been established within an academic institution it will attract a community of teachers and scholars who have a vested interest in its continuity and growth. Adherents to the discipline tend to work within its intellectual paradigms, taking them as given rather than exploring the boundaries of their subject in a critical manner.