paraliterature
Etymology
From para- + literature.
paraliterature means literature not thought of as literary, usually including comics, most genre fiction (such as fantasy and sci-fi), and pulp fiction. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 88 out of 100.
Why this word is great
PARALITERATURE — [Noun] Writing that exists beside, beyond, and in altered relation to the established literary canon, encompassing the commercial, the popular, and the generically formulaic. Its etymology is a spatial slight: from the Greek prefix para- (meaning "beside, alongside, beyond, altered") grafted onto literature, marking it as literature's adjacent, altered shadow. Unlike canonical literature, which is enshrined by institutional study, or genre fiction, a neutral descriptor of narrative conventions, paraliterature is defined by a critical absence—the cultural category for what is consumed but not consecrated. It is the lurid magazine splayed on a subway seat; the dog-eared paperback with a spaceship dissolving in a rainy bus-stop puddle; the serialized adventure consumed with a flashlight under bedcovers. These are the stories we live by but are seldom taught to remember—the vital, disposable sustenance of the collective imagination, a testament to the hunger for narrative that persists even in the absence of prestige.
noun
- Literature not thought of as literary, usually including comics, most genre fiction (such as fantasy and sci-fi), and pulp fiction.