Modern Literary study was founded on an opposition between the canon and its other , popular culture. The theory wars of the 1970s and the 1980s and, in particular, the advent of structuralist and post structuralist theory, transformed this relationship. With `the death of literature’, the distinction between high and popular culture was no longer tenable, and the field of inquiry shifted from literary into cultural studies. Anthony Easthope argues that this new discipline must find a methodological consensus for its analysis of canonical and popular texts. Through a detailed criticism of competing theories (British cultural studies, New Historicism, cultural materialism) he shows how this new study should – and should not be done. Easthope’s exploration of the problems, possibilities and politics of this new discipline includes an original reassessment of the question of literary value. By contrasting Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with Burrough’s Tarzan of the Apes, Easthope demonstrates how textuality sustains the opposition between high and popular culture darkness.
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