ABSTRACT
Several definitions of popular literature – that which sold well, that which was wellliked, and that which was somehow ‘of the people’ – come together in the four chapters in this section. The fairy stories, the myths and legends, the accounts of heroes and heroines, which are all to be encountered here, had for centuries constituted a core of popular culture. In fact, they go a long way to defining it. As for their enduring appeal, and the delight that readers continued to take in them, these are evident from the sheer length of their publishing history and their perpetual re-publication in new forms. It is doubtless true that there is something inherently satisfying about these resilient texts – Jack the Giant Killer, say, or Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, or the history of Robin Hood – and that it was at least partly the particular qualities of these narratives, settings and characters which kept them popular for so long. But what also emerges very strongly from these four chapters is that it was the ability to adapt that was the secret of their success. Chapbook tales and fairy stories were reinvented over and over again in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as David Blamires shows with particular reference to the story of The White Cat, they are still evolving today. Kevin Carpenter and George Speaight have surveyed this process in detail, the former tracing the ways in which the Robin Hood story was deliberately refashioned to appeal to new audiences, and the latter (in collaboration with Brian Alderson) examining the ways in which chapbook and fairy tales were adapted to the specific demands of the pantomime and the moveable book.
