PRODUCTION

CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE

DEGENION | CIMAFRANCA | PAJULAS | CAÑO | MAGDASOC

TOPICS

01 Author 02 Printed texts

03 Live and recorded 04 E-texts

performances
LITERARY INDUSTRY
 LITERARY INDUSTRY

• a system that enables the production of literature in material forms

(print, electronic, etc.) and encourages readers to consume (buy or
invest in) literature so that the system can be sustained and
expanded

• includes processes such as publishing novels or

staging theatre
 LITERARY INDUSTRY

PRODUCTION RECEPTION
CONSUMPTION

▪ making literary texts and ▪ the ways in which these are

performances available to obtained or accessed, read or
those who are interested watched, etc.
 LITERARY INDUSTRY

THE LITERARY AUTHOR

Novelist

Playwright

Poet
AUTHORS
 | AUTHORS

1. The author as implied in the text

▪ Analyzing a text closely allows us to understand the author’s

intentions and gain insights into their character.
▪ During the early 1900s, T.S. Eliot, a modernist poet, and
James Joyce, a novelist, believed in intentionally avoiding the
expression of their personal identities in their writings.

• Death of the author (1977) by Roland Barthes

- argues against traditional literary criticism’s practice on relying

on the intentions and biography of an author to definitely
explain the ultimately meaning of the text
 | AUTHORS

2. The author a public figure

▪ Writers are often promoted alongside their works, and our

reading choices are frequently influenced by information about
the author.

▪ Authors establish reputations based on their writings, and they

may receive praise, criticism, or even face consequences for the
content of their texts.

▪ Our sense of what is contemporary in literature derives

significantly from the living presence of the author.
 | AUTHORS

3. The author as a legally recognized person

▪ authors as legal persons

▪ texts as legal documents

 | AUTHORS

•The literary text we usually read is a finished product and itself

gives no particular hint about that process.

• Whatever the author claims is only retrospective.

• Any attempt to know for sure how the author’s life and writing
were really interwoven or connected is chimerical or unrealistic.

• The notion of such understanding might be an illusion.

 | AUTHORS

• The text produced by a living author or one that emerged during

our lifetime often serves as a tangible assurance of it's
"contemporariness."

• This connection implies a relationship between the process of

writing and our everyday world.
PRINTED TEXTS
 | PRINTED TEXTS

• texts that are available in books, journals, magazines, pamphlets

•Broadly speaking, our understanding of contemporary literature is

mediated by the prevailing process of publication and distribution in
three ways.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

1. DOOR-KEEPING

▪ Agencies and publishing firms involved in the production process

determine what should or shouldn’t be valued in literature by
regulating access to readers.

▪ depends on how well their selected authors can connect with

the readers

▪ Agencies and firms play a crucial role in determining the content

and discussion of literature, which in turn shapes our
understanding of literature.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

2. TASTE-MAKING

▪ This process involves not just catering to existing tastes and

demands, but also trying to create new tastes and demands.

▪ Advance publicity is crucial for publishers and distributors,

ensuring their texts are visible through catalogues,
advertisements, author profiles, and organizing events and
festivals.
▪ the consequences for what contemporary literary texts we
are able to get hold of, and how; and for what we choose to
read, and why
 | PRINTED TEXTS

3. DISSEMINATING

▪ make the literary text accessible to as many readers as possible

▪ Costly ideas like importing printed matter, exporting it, and

translating it face challenges due to transportation, distribution,
and varying regulations in different countries.

▪ Our reading habits and understanding of what is contemporary

may well, thus, be influenced by publishers and distributors
without our quite realizing it.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

These are the following people that needs to be consider along the
way:

1. The literary agent

▪ Similar to a publisher, it aims to generate income from literary works.

This can involve charging authors for guidance and primarily
convincing publishers to publish authors' texts, subsequently earning a
share of the profits.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

2. The commissioning editor

▪ An.Author may also send the book directly to a commissioning editor

(an unsolicited submission), who represents a publishing firm.

• The commissioning editor plays a key role in deciding whether the

book should be published. It doesn’t decide by itself, and has to work
with other colleagues and systems in place, but if she isn’t interested to
it, then her firm won’t go for it.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

3. The marketing/publicity editor

• The marketing editor will assess the potential success of a novel with
potential readers and determine the most suitable marketing strategy
for the book.

• The publicity editor’s responsibilities involve planning the distribution

channels, identifying target readers, determining suitable pricing,
selecting appropriate publicity materials to accompany the published
text, and other related tasks.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

4. The advisory reader

• They are like special helpers who read stories and give advice to
authors. If they really like a story, they might suggest making big
changes to it, like writing a whole new different story instead.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

5. The designer

• After the final version of the novel is ready, the designer starts
working on creating the cover and other promotional materials, such as
catalogs and notices, in collaboration with the team and the author
itself.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

6. The distributor

• The distributor maintains strong relationships with the publishing

company's editors and different retailers to effectively communicate the
rationale behind publishing the novel. They may create their own
catalogs and showcase the novel in unique ways to promote it.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

6. The retailers

• In a physical bookstore, a bookseller might place a novel in the

window or on a bestseller shelf.

• Online retailers often provide extensive details about the novel,

encourage reader feedback and ratings based on sales, offer previews
of some pages to spark interest, create personalized recommendation
lists, and more to engage readers.
LIVE AND
RECORDED
PERFORMANCES
We are accustomed to thinking of drama as literature due to a
tradition that goes back to the classical periods of several
languages and cultures. For instance, literary criticism about
European traditions usually refers back to Aristotle’s Poetics
(fourth century BC), which was devoted largely to drama and
verse, much as literature and art criticism in India often recalls
Bharata’s Natya Shastra (the beginning of the first millennium
AD), which was on the aesthetics of drama, dance and music.
Live and recorded performances are within the remit of
literature and literary studies insofar as they relate in
some way to written/printed texts. It is the nature of this
relationship that is within the remit of studying literature
systematically, rather than the nuances of performances
in themselves or of performances without reference to
written texts.
● where a written text is for the purpose of generating a live/recorded
performance (such as play scripts and screenplays);
● where a live/recorded performance adapts or otherwise draws upon an
existing literary text (such as novels being adapted for television
series);
● where a literary text is produced from a live/recorded performance
(sometimes a popular feature film can lead to fanfiction or published
popular fiction); and
● where readers of literary texts find their views influenced by certain
live/recorded performances (say, a reader’s reading of a play is
coloured by watching a performance of it beforehand).
 | PRINTED TEXTS

1. SELECTION

▪ Selection in the context of live and recorded performances in

production refers to the process of choosing specific projects,
scripts, or proposals to be developed and presented to
audiences.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

2. CONVENTIONS

• Conventions refer to established norms, rules, or practices

within the industry that govern various aspects of creating and
presenting performances.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

3. CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE

When a literary text that is not contemporary –

such as a classical play or a nineteenth-century
novel – is produced on stage or screen now, we
have, I have argued above, a work of
contemporary literary relevance.
 | PRINTED TEXTS

4. Reading and Peformance Text

Reading texts involve the traditional act of interpreting

written content, focusing on textual analysis and individual
interpretation, whether in solitary reading or communal
discussion settings. On the other hand, performance texts
emphasize the oral delivery and enactment of literary
works through live performances, such as theater, spoken
word, or multimedia presentations, incorporating elements
like voice modulation, gestures, and visual aids to convey
meaning and foster audience interaction.
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
| PRINTED TEXTS
 CREDITS: This presentation template was created by
Slidesgo, and includes icons by Flaticon, and
infographics & images by Freepik

Thanks!