Highbrow vs. Lowbrow

This is my first blog for the emergent lit. class (yay! yay! cheers abound!) The theme in emergent lit. this semester, as chosen by Dr. Sexson, is "highbrow" lit. vs. "lowbrow" lit. This theme should spark some interesting... *ahem*, debate in the class. Hopefully, people won't have their favorite book shown as lowbrow and get defensive-- this is definitely the risk of this class. Also, we run the risk of showing ourselves to be "elitist" in the contemporary, negative sense of the word. I think with careful deliberation and discussion we should avoid most of the pitfalls for this subject and have illuminating discussions on the subject!

For this introductory blog, I will mostly dictate my personal feelings towards the differences between highbrow and lowbrow literature. I would definitely say that the main difference between between highbrow and lowbrow, to me, is intended reading audience. For highbrow lit. the audience is a rather small, elite group of knowledgeable readers. Often times the readers of highbrow lit. would include people like professors, and other highly "cultured" people. The obvious criticism of this group is that it is "elitist" (in the negative sense) and is noninclusive of all readerships.

The other group is the lowbrow lit. It seems that this group is intended for a more broad readership which often lends it to a "dumbing" down of themes that appear in highbrow lit. While this style of lit. is more democratic it doesn't provide the same depth that highbrow readers look for. This is for the "common reader" (negative connotation).

So often we set the two against each other like it's some sort of competition as to which is "better" (what a stupid pursuit). I would like to think that this semester will be an exploration of the benefits and characteristics of each. I hope we will learn that they do not hold each other down but lift each other up!

*Highbrow*

















*Lowbrow*