The ballad and the fork song have long been recognized as important keys to the thoughts and feelings of a people, but the dime novel though sought by the collector and referred to in a general way by the social historian, is dismissed with a smile of amusement by almost everyone else. Neither fork songs nor dime novels were actually created by the plain people of America. But in their devotion to these modes of expression, the people made them their own. The dime novel,interested as it was for the great masses and designed to fill the pockets of both author and publisher, quite naturally sought the lowest common denominator (共同点, 标准): themes that were found to be popular and attitudes that met with the most general approval became stereotyped(定型的). Moreover, the dime novel, reflecting a much wider range of attitudes and ideas than the ballad and the fork song, is the nearest thing we have had in this country to a true "proletarian" literature, that is, a literature written for the great masses of people and actually read by them.
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