Dead or Alive: An analysis of the academic debate about the state of the novel.
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2016-07-01
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en
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This research aims to answer the following question: “What are the various arguments raised by professional readers within the academic debate about the state of the novel and how do they compare to the book consumption and online engagement with literature of non-professional readers?”. It will do so by first explicating the academic debate about the state of the novel in chapter one. Chapter two will examine data provided by the NEA, Pew Research Centre, and The Bookseller concerning the book consumption of non-professional readers in the US and the UK, as well as their online engagement with literature on websites such as fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org. Moreover, the chapter will also examine the influence that The Man Booker Prize has on the literary market and how it possibly provides a link between professional and non-professional readers. The research will be placed a theoretical framework based on Bourdieu’s field theory, thus providing a socio-economic analysis of the interaction between the debate about the state of the novel and the book consumption of non-professional readers, and how literary prizes such as the Man Booker Prize influence this dynamic. It is anticipated that there is a discrepancy between the number of novels that are written, sold, and read, and the way that professional readers depict the state of the novel within the debate. This research analyses the most important arguments made within the debate about the state of the novel and, for the first time, compares them to hard data concerning the reading and buying habits of non-professional readers.
Keywords: Academic debate, death of the novel, non-professional readers, Bourdieu, The Man Booker Prize
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