The Power of the Spoken Word: Literature in the American Broadcasting and Film Industry of the 1990s

The 1990s saw a climax of adaptations of novels previously accepted into the American literary canon, while television and radio marketed literature through book clubs and literary shows. This book argues that the U.S. mediatized literature of the 1990s constitutes a post-modern re-enactment of the traditional oral literature that initially emerged on U.S. territory with minority pre-literate populations. While existing scholarship acknowledges the impact of the oral tradition on written literature and sporadically discusses fiction to film translations, this study demonstrates the traditional oral features and functions of the mediatized literature and aesthetically validates this type of literature based on theories of the linguistic sign, the Bakhtinian dialogic system, and the Jungian concept of the collective unconsciousness among others. Literature and media scholars will be intrigued to discover that mediatized literature is yet another product of globalization, and avid consumers of literature will find this book a valuable resource for understanding the commercial and political levers that predicate the production, dissemination, and consumption of mediatized literature.