Eomer of the Rohirrim wrote:
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Are these people insinuating that Republic, for example, cannot be enjoyed?
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I think they would claim that it can be enjoyed, but that it must be enjoyed in a different way from popular books. The enjoyment provided by serious literature, they would say, lies
exclusively in the enjoyment of
study - just as a mathemetician may enjoy working with some interesting function. Popular books, on the other hand, are to be read "merely" for enjoyment, not for study. On the one hand there is serious/permanent literature and on the other hand recreational/consumable literature.
So I suspect that the academic would in fact claim to enjoy serious literature. But I think that there is something that runs contrary to that claim in the very nature of the serious/popular distinction - the notion is, I suppose, that popular literature exists solely for enjoyment while serious literature is only incidentally enjoyed. This I think is just as unfair to serious literature as it is to popular. Indeed, I get the feeling that few academics really
enjoy some of the classics.
Beowulf is a prime example, and one that brings us back to Tolkien. To many or most modern literary scholars, the value of
Beowulf is essentially historical. Prior to Tolkien's famous essay, most of the study done on the poem amounted to an attempt to disentangle original material from later accumulations, to dissect the poem and analyze it. Tolkien argued, quite persuasively, that
Beowulf as it has come down to us has literary value in itself, and should be valued (and studied) as literature, not as a mere historical document.
Lalwende wrote:
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Where does this divide originate? I have thought about whether it is a case of marketing, but if so, then why do more writers of 'literary fiction' not push to be marketed as bestseller writers? Surely they want to make more money?
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I'm not sure they do. I think that what some of them want is simply to create good works of art, and I admire that kind of writer - Tolkien was like that, I think. An unfortunate subset of those have, I think, somewhat misguided notions of what "good art" means. Others probably chiefly desire the esteem of the literary establishment.
One interesting aspect of this whole subject is the matter of popular writers who are, to some degree, forced upon the "literati" by their staying power. Dickens is a prime example - though there still is a certain tendency to look down on him, he has sort of made his way into the canon. Tolkien has not - and yet, more academics take him seriously now than did so in the 1950s or 1960s.