{"id":311,"date":"2017-10-05T14:20:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh17fall.amandadvite.com\/?p=82"},"modified":"2017-10-05T14:20:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T20:20:43","slug":"thinking-about-normal-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/student-posts\/thinking-about-normal-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about \u201cNormal\u201d Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Moretti article mentions the phrase &#8220;normal&#8221; literature more than once. It says that normal literature is the kind of literature that prevails for about twenty-five to thirty years. I can see how that would make sense. I think an example of &#8220;normal&#8221; literature in our day and age is the vampire romance genre or the dystopian genre or the apocalyptic genre. These should be considered &#8220;normal&#8221; based on Moretti&#8217;s article because they have been around for a while and probably won&#8217;t go away for the next few years.<\/p>\n<p>But what does literature become after it has been &#8220;normal&#8221; literature?<\/p>\n<p>What term should we use then? &#8220;Archaic&#8221; or &#8220;abnormal&#8221;? Something else? A term that is thrown around a lot is &#8220;classic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Oh yes, you have to read <em>Pride and Prejudice<\/em>. It&#8217;s a classic!&#8221; How many times have you heard a sentence like this, with some other title in the phrase? What does that tell you about the book? Yes, it&#8217;s a classic, which could mean that it used to be &#8220;normal&#8221; literature, but does that mean it&#8217;s a good read? No one said that, did they?<\/p>\n<p>I realize I&#8217;m asking a lot of questions, so now I&#8217;d like to present a couple of small thoughts that could be answers. &#8220;Normal&#8221; literature does not mean that other genres are &#8220;abnormal,&#8221; but it just means that it&#8217;s not what&#8217;s in. It&#8217;s not what&#8217;s trending. And yes, I do think a good term for the retired &#8220;normal&#8221; literature would be &#8220;classic.&#8221; I&#8217;m not saying that all literature we consider &#8220;classic&#8221; was &#8220;normal&#8221; literature of its time, but I&#8217;m sure a lot of it was. That&#8217;s why many people read it and many people still read it today. Everyone reads the &#8220;normal&#8221; literature of the day to fit in with the crowd, and since it was so popular then, it can still be popular now in the form of a &#8220;classic.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dh17fall.amandadvite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/better-story-than-twilight.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-83\" src=\"https:\/\/dh17fall.amandadvite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/better-story-than-twilight-231x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"231\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dh17fall.amandadvite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/better-story-than-twilight-231x300.jpg 231w, https:\/\/dh17fall.amandadvite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/better-story-than-twilight.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 231px) 100vw, 231px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0https:\/\/www.pinterest.co.uk\/lorrainedelp\/jane-austen\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Moretti article mentions the phrase &ldquo;normal&rdquo; literature more than once. It says that normal literature is the kind of literature that prevails for about twenty-five to thirty years. I can see how that would make sense. I think an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-posts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aQyB-51","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancroxall.net\/f17dh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}