ABSTRACT
It is common to mark a distinction between popular fiction and literary fiction or, as it is sometimes called, "serious literature". Most of the relevant philosophical work in this area has focused on popular art or mass art generally. But, unsurprisingly, many of the central philosophical concerns about popular art also arise in the context of a consideration of popular fiction. Popular fiction and literary fiction do not exhaust the domain of written fiction. The vast majority of works of popular fiction fall into recognizable genres such as romance, science fiction, horror, mystery, fantasy, or the western, but it is not clear that they must do so unless one assumes that all fiction falls into such a genre. Recently, some philosophers have focused on specific issues raised by popular genres of fiction. Noël Carroll has explored a range of issues related to the horror genre.
