Pulp
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Originally, the term pulp denoted cheap paper, first produced in the 1850s. Since then, it has also acquired the meaning of cheap literature: a host of maligned literary genres that probably begins with chivalric romances, then moves to dime novels and men's magazines. Metaphorically, it can be used to denote any form of low culture.
Pulp and literacy
The history of literacy goes back several thousand years, but before the industrial revolution finally made cheap paper and cheap books available to all classes in industrialized countries in the mid-nineteenth century, only a small percentage of the population in these countries were literate. Up until that point, materials associated with literacy were prohibitively expensive for people other than wealthy individuals and institutions.
See also
- Low culture
- Mass media
- Pulp fiction, fiction as written by hack writers
- Pulp magazine or pulp fiction, inexpensive fiction magazines published from the 1920s through the 1950s, or paperbacks from the 1950s onwards
- Wood pulp, the most common material used to make paper