The World Literature and Mass Media

As stated in the previous chapter, the World Literature is closely bound with all the modern mass media and journalism as a logical part of it. In fact, many scholars find journalism a phenomenon that comes from literature. And this is no surprise as the interest to the surrounding political, economic, social, etc events that appeared in Europe in the 18th century gave rise to the journalism. At that time, the number of literate and educated people was very limited. So, it is no surprise that most of writers became journalists publishing not only literary but also joutnalistic material. The cities grew, industries developed, the course of social/political life changed and as a result the interest to all kinds of sensations, rumours, details, etc was rapidly growing.

It's an interesting fact that most of world-known writers started from journalism polishing up their style in the literary domain firstly. It is this situation with Frederique Stendal, Anatole France, Nekrasov and so forth. A lot of them remained in the journalism not having created any considerable literary opus. As for American writers-journalists, they are Rebecca York, Lucille Clifton, Taylor Branch, Russel Baker and so on. In fact, the international list is non-exhaustive.