Cultural Convergence and Economic Imperatives: Global Forces Shaping Popular Literature

Abstract

With a focus on the role that cultural convergence and economic imperatives play, this paper critically examines how these two factors have influenced the movement of popular literature into the 21st century. As literary production and consumption are no longer limited geographically and by language, with digital technologies and transnational networks of publishing houses as well as the participatory nature of the writer-reader relationship, popular literature is turned into the means of global imagination as well as a point of struggle between aesthetic expression and a market economy. This paper examines the impact of the  hybridities in literature that manifest out of intercultural exchanges, focusing on  the globalized financial system on  narrative patterns and themes and the strategies for profiting from platforms. This paper contends that popular literature is the site of a two-fold movement: to a creative pluralism and worldwide significance at the same time being marked by the standardisation and commodification of popular works. By the end of the analysis, popular literature is framed as a dynamic cultural medium where there is an  interplay between innovation, identities, and economic survival and sustainability in more global environments.