An interesting book on "cultural dissonance" is that of Bernard Lahire, La culture des individus, which shows that most individuals definitely don't fall within well defined "low brow" and "high brow" categories, but rather fall somewhere in between, depending on the class they started in, but also who they met, whether they are trying to climb the social hierarchy, and their own tastes... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
It's also worth noting that just because something was popular in the past (Opera, Dumas, Hugo) does not mean that it falls automatically within popular literacy of the present day.
i.e. As you note below, many of the conventions surrounding "high art" were late Victorian vanity inventions. However, they were invented and they did change patterns of consumption.
To run this back to the music thread for a moment, this matters because the story of changes in music consumption is more than just the technology, in fact, given certain effects of the technology the social markers are a more powerful explanation of certain trends.
Finally, to add to the bit about politics that nanne pointed up, the growth of literature festivals is not an innovation, but it is a growth and it does imply a change in the social role of the literature involved, maybe not compared to 150 years ago, but compared to 50 years ago. And that too, is potentially important.
Where social change appears to happen slowly, channels are chosen that 'speed up' insight - like time lapse - and conversely, where change appears rapid, 'slo-mo' channels are chosen. You can't be me, I'm taken
Also, are we so sure that the changes in artistic consumptions in the last century are that deep ? My grand father in the 30's would go to the Opera and to see a popular singer like Damia ; Sartre loved westerns and I'm sure he wasn't the only one. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
