Literature and Mass Culture

by Leo Löwenthal

This first volume of the collected writings of sociologist Leo Lowenthal contains his classic theoretical and historical writings on the relationship of art to mass culture. This book series presents Lowenthal's contributions to a theory of the role of communication in modern society. This volume lays out the basis for a theory of mass culture. Lowenthal demonstrates that the juxtaposition of a "low"mass culture and a "high"esoteric culture did not originate in contemporary industrial, bourgeois society but can be traced back to the Middle Ages and antiquity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cultural Studies, Sociology

328 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Leo Löwenthal (1900–1993) was a German sociologist associated with the Frankfurt School. He joined the newly founded Institute for Social Research in 1926 and quickly became its leading expert on the sociology of literature and mass culture as well as the managing editor of the journal it launched in 1932, the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. When the Nazis came to power, he fled to the USA. After seven years as research director of the Voice of America, he joined the Berkeley Speech Department in 1956 and shortly thereafter the Department of Sociology.

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