THE PHENOMENON OF MASS LITERATURE AS THE TOTALITY OF ARTIFACTS IN THE CONTEXT OF A UNIFIED CLASSIFICATION
In the article, the authors define the concept of “mass culture”. The formulation of the concept of “mass” as undifferentiated set in the context of mass culture is specified. It is proposed to comprehend and understand the content of the term “mass literature” as a divergence of the concept of “fiction”. The points of view of researchers in this field were meticulously studied, dispassionately analyzed, and briefly voiced. The categorical belonging of the concept of “mass literature” was defined in the context of a unified classification. Then the authors made an attempt to give retrospective description of the studied phenomenon and its hypothetical differentiation in the directions of literary processes from the position of the priority series by the method of “collective term”. In the proposed classification, each element is given a capacious definition, taking into account its artistic and intellectual level and an objective analysis of the researchers works in this field. The purpose of this article is an attempt to give retrospective description and more complete differentiation of the phenomenon of mass literature. The object of the study was “mass literature”. In the article, it is considered as a cultural standard in the context of world culture. The subject of study is the unified classification of this phenomenon. The novelty of this study is an attempt to give more full classification of the “mass literature” concept. The relevance of the subject matter of this article lies in the fact that “mass literature” as any cultural standard has a historically determined necessity in its basis; therefore, there is urgent need for a thorough and in-depth study of the phenomenon called “mass literature”.