WHAT IS LITERATURE?

1. Have you ever felt that some of the books you read or have read are not quite "literature"?
2. How can one define "literature"? Is it writing which is "imaginative" or fictive as
opposed to factual, true and historical? If that definition works then ask what is fact and
what is fiction? The Bible? Greek myths? News reports?
3. What about imaginative writing that is not considered literature? Harlequin romances,
comics, computer game stories...
4. What about literature that seems more like history? Boswell's Bio of Samuel Johnson, the
works of Mill and Ruskin. Many novels have facts and many are based on historical
events. So is fact vs fiction a useful distinction?
5. What about using language to decide what is literature? Can one consider some kinds of
language as literary and others as ordinary? What are the problems with this approach?
6. Could we say that literature is literature because it is not useful? Is literature to be defined
as writing with no practical purpose? Well, one could read Moby Dick to find out how to
kill whales so is it no longer literature?
7. Is literature the kind of writing we like to read? A kind of writing that we value? Well,
then anything can be literature or stop being literature.
8. Do you think that literature is a highly subjective category?
9. Are your ideas about literature linked to your education, your environment, how you have
been taught? Are your ideas linked to what you have been exposed to, allowed to read?
Are you influenced by other people's values when you talk about literature?
10. What does one's definition of literature reveal about one's attitudes, beliefs, values,
training and socialization?
11. How do definitions of what is good literature coincide with specific political issues like
who should have what role or function in society? What kinds of behaviors and beliefs
should be included or excluded? Consider the race, gender, class and time periods of
authors you have read in school. This will tell you something about the system of values
and beliefs that is privileged by your education.
12. Is how you read a political issue? Why or why not?

Based on Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory, Chapter 1

kmathai/intro_litt