Role of Literature in Age of Globalization

Abstract

My effort in this paper is to understand the impact of recent world-wide economic and technical trends such as globalization, privatization, e-commercialization, e-communication and e-socialization on the cultural and ideological production of the world, especially postcolonial societies such as India in postmodern era.  How have these trends impinged upon culture in general and literature in particular?  To what extent can our study of literature benefit from some of the currents taking place in the domain of economics and technology?  Further, in the postmodern context, what sort of explanatory models might be developed to account for certain literary tendencies and practices that are widely discernable?  In a sense, then, this paper is concerned not with the analysis of specific texts and their meanings but with what makes these texts visible, marketable, and meaningful in the larger context of our times. I am also interested in the role that economic and technological forces play in the process of bringing popular culture in literary texts in place of ‘high seriousness’ in postcolonial societies and how it can survive in long run of time with conserving traditions and without hurting innovations in postmodern human society where “men sit and hear each other groan; where but to think is to be full of sorrow; where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes; and new love pine at them beyond tomorrow” (Keats 1832, p.132).