what is literature?

What is Literature?

v Literature is a term used to describe written or spoken material. Broadly speaking, "literature" is used to describe anything from creative writing to more technical or scientific works, but the term is most commonly used to refer to works of the creative imagination, including works of poetry, drama, fiction, and nonfiction.

v Literature represents a language or a people: culture and tradition. But, literature is more important than just a historical or cultural artifact. Literature introduces us to new worlds of experience. We learn about books and literature; we enjoy the comedies and the tragedies of poems, stories, and plays; and we may even grow and evolve through our literary journey with books.

v Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze literature, there is still an artistic quality to the works. Literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us. Even when it is ugly, literature is beautiful.

v Also known as Classics, learning, erudition, belles-lettres, lit, literary works written work, writings, and books.

v Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author says and how he/she says it. We may interpret the author's message. In academic circles, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of literary theory, using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or other approach.

v "What is Literature?" remains the most significant critical landmark of French literature since World War II. Neither abstract nor abstruse, it is a brilliant, provocative performance by a writer more inspired than cautious.

v Eagleton points out the fragile concept of the literary "canon" with which we are all familiar, and by which we are all conditioned. It is at this juncture, however, that I find myself obliged to stand as a bulwark against his attempted deconstruction of said concept. While he is right that this canon is nothing more than an aggregate of historical literary value judgments, of, in effect, shared belief systems pertaining to the written word, and may very well be a tool for the perpetuation of various social ideologies, I must nevertheless defend this much-maligned group of texts as being, for the most part, valuable and worthwhile. No amount of intellectual posturing can persuade me that The Merchant of Venice is on a par with The Silence of the Lambs. Eagleton's point that each of us is a thinking individual and capable of forming our own opinions as to the literary quality of a given work is well taken; I should not, on the other hand, be criticized for coming to the conclusion, via such prescribed scrutiny, that the majority of texts in the accepted canon are, in fact, literature.

v In summing up, I wish to thank the instructor for his chosen format in the teaching of "Junior Seminar." The application of specific sections of Eagleton's book to selected works of literature (ooh, ooh-"literature"-can't say that, can't say that!) has been invaluable to my awareness of that murky, treacherous nether region of English studies known as literary theory. While realizing that I have only just touched the surface of this gigantic bad egg of pedantry and pretentiousness, I feel confident that I can escape the onslaught of post-structuralists and mimeticists reasonably unscathed.