Literary Festivals and Cultural Consumption
RIS ID
29352
Abstract
o understand Ihe dynamics ofliterary festivals is to engage with the social and cultural co-ordinates of a particular manifestation of what Bourdicu calls the literary field, and to observe its production of authors and readers as well as tex Is. The reflections on festival culture assembled in th is essay take their cue, not so much from Bourdieu's ambitious project of cul tural mapping as from his insistence that the analysis of ' the social conditions of the production and reception of a work of art, far from reducing it or destroying it, in fact intensifies the literary experience' (The Rilles 0/ An xix). The nature and intensity of the literary experience in the festival setting, which are the main concerns of this essay, di splace and modify but do not destroy the pleasure of the text, which proves remarkably resi lient whether enhanced by other pleasures or subjected to cri tical scruti ny.
Publication Details
Ommundsen, W. (2009). Literary Festivals and Cultural Consumption. Australian Literary Studies, 24 (1), 19-34.