FORMATION OF THE POPULAR CULTURAL AND LITERARY SPACE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Abstract

The article examines the genesis and functional characteristics of U.S. popular democratic culture in the first half of the 19th century as a fundamental factor in the formation of the national literary discourse. The author analyzes the evolution of scholarly perspectives on the nature of mass literature, tracing its trajectory from being perceived as a «parasitic» phenomenon to its recognition as a valid object of theoretical reflection. The study systematizes six key concepts of popular culture according to J. Storey, facilitating a deeper understanding of this phenomenon’s multifaceted nature within a sociocultural context. Particular attention is paid to the specifics of American Romanticism, which, unlike its European counterparts, developed in the absence of a traditional folkloric foundation or classical heritage. It is argued that the role of the «national soul» in the United States was fulfilled by a vibrant popular democratic culture. The era of Andrew Jackson’s presidency is identified as a turning point that radically altered the paradigm of American letters by legitimizing previously forbidden or marginalized themes: from sharp social satire and sensational reporting to daring experiments with corporeality. The article examines the works of key figures of the «American Renaissance» (E. A. Poe, N. Hawthorne, H. Melville, W. Whitman, R. W. Emerson, and H. D. Thoreau) through the prism of their interaction with «low» genres. The thesis is substantiated that the division into «dark» (pessimistic) and «optimistic» trends is conventional, as both vectors drew from shared sources of the popular press, religious didactics, and commercial literature. The author concludes that American classics are the result of an intense dialogue between elite intellectual strategies and the spontaneous democratism of the masses. Such an approach allows for a reimagining of the genetic links between canonical works and the media landscape of the time, highlighting the uniqueness of the national path of literary development in the United States