 Arthur Krystal (2023) What Is Literature?

In defense of the canon Harper's

Magazine Foundation

There’s a new definition of literature in town. It has been slouching toward us for some
time now but may have arrived officially in 2009, with the publication of Greil Marcus
and Werner Sollors’s A New Literary History of America. Alongside essays on Twain,
Fitzgerald, Frost, and Henry James, there are pieces about Jackson Pollock, Chuck
Berry, the telephone, the Winchester rifle, and Linda Lovelace. Apparently, “literary
means not only what is written but what is voiced, what is expressed, what is invented,
in whatever form” — in which case maps, sermons, comic strips, cartoons, speeches,
photographs, movies, war memorials, and music all huddle beneath the literary
umbrella. Books continue to matter, of course, but not in the way that earlier
generations took for granted. In 2004, “the most influential cultural figure now alive,”
according to Newsweek, wasn’t a novelist or historian; it was Bob Dylan. Not
incidentally, the index to A New Literary History contains more references to Dylan than
to Stephen Crane and Hart Crane combined. Dylan may have described himself as “a
song-and-dance man,” but Marcus and Sollors and such critics as Christopher Ricks
beg to differ. Dylan, they contend, is one of the greatest poets this nation has ever
produced (in point of fact, he has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature every
year since 1996).

 Emmanuel Kachele (2019) 'O' LEVEL LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (OLLE)

| THEORY OF LITERATURE Definitions of Literature

One and useful definition of literature has been ‘it is simply anything that is written:
textbooks, brochures, newspapers, manuals and so on. For instance, if you are thinking
to buy a motorcycle, you will probably want to see the literature (instructions manual)
about it. If you are Physics student, you will have to read the literature about Physics
too! Thus, we may conclude that all written materials like historical books, magazines,
dictionaries, novels, encyclopedias, plays, short stories, and so on are literatures.
 Rexroth, Kenneth. "Literature | Definition, Characteristics, Genres, Types, &
Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020.
Retrieved 27 July 2020.

Literature, a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those
imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors
and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified
according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical
period, genre, and subject matter.

For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical regions, see such

articles as African literature; African theatre; Oceanic literature; Western
literature; Central Asian arts; South Asian arts; and Southeast Asian arts. Some
literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject
(e.g., Arabic literature, Celtic literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese
literature, and biblical literature).

Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of
form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-
century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a
“transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But such definitions
assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central
meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the
alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it
is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual
pieces of writing.

 Reece, Steve. "Orality and Literacy: Ancient Greek Literature as Oral Literature,"
in David Schenker and Martin Hose (eds.), Companion to Greek Literature (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2015) 43-57. Ancient_Greek_Literature_as_Oral_Literature Archived 1
January 2020 at the Wayback Machine
For most of its history humankind has been illiterate. But this does not mean that
humans used to be literarily less sophisticated: they sang hymns to gods, chanted ritual
curses, ululated funerary laments, crafted complex genealogies, invented proverbs,
fables, and folk‐ tales, and even composed long heroic epics in demanding metrical
forms. All these genres of literature were orally created, orally performed, and orally
transmitted to subsequent generations. The inhabitants of the lands that we now know
as Greece were no exception. All ancient Greek literature was to some degree oral in
nature, and the earliest literature was completely so. Consequently the term “ancient
Greek literature “in a literal sense of the words is an oxymoron. For “literature " requires
litterae " letters " : letters written by an author, whether with a reed pen, a printing press,
or a keyboard; letters read by a reader, whether on a roll of papyrus, a sheet of paper,
or a computer monitor. And these are activities foreign in greater and lesser degrees to
the composition, reception, and transmission of much of what we by convention call
ancient Greek literature.

 Romilly, Jacqueline de (1985). A Short History of Greek Literature. University of

Chicago Press. p. 1. ISBN 978-0226143125. Archived from the original on 10 August
2017. Retrieved 22 November 2016.

Greek literature as we known it begins with two great epic, handed down under the
name of Homer-Iliad and the Odyssey. The two works are written in dactylic
hexameters; the first is about 15,000 lines in length, the other about 12,000. One tells of
a part of the war the Archeans waged against Troy, and include the wrath of Achilles,
his withdrawal from the fighting, and his return to the battle to avenge his friend; it ends
when he has killed the Trojan hero, Hector, and return’s Hector’s body to his own
people. The other tells of the return of Odysseus to his home after the sack of Troy.

 Sana (2020) What is Literature? (Definition of Literature by Celebrated Authors)

September 23, 2020 

The word ‘Literature’ is a modified form of a Latin word (literra, litteratura or

litteratus) that means: ‘writing formed with letters’. Let us look at what is literature
according to definitions by different celebrated literary personalities.
Literature generally can be any written work, but it is especially an artistic or intellectual
work of writing. It is one of the fine arts, like painting, dance, music, etc. which provides
aesthetic pleasure to the readers. It differs from other written works by only its one
additional trait: that is aesthetic beauty. If a written work lacks aesthetic beauty and
serves only utilitarian purpose, it is not literature. The entire genre like poetry, drama, or
prose is blend of intellectual works and has aesthetic beauty of that work. When there is
no any aesthetic beauty in any written work that is not pure literature.

There’s a saying “history never repeat itself”.

In my own perception it is a timeline with a written facts or a timeframe of a particular

events that happen in the past. Even if it’s in real life or a Fiction the perfect word for a
novel, epic, short story, etc.

It’s already written or happen in the past that other people let’s say our elderly have
experience or know those facts though we don’t know it due to our lack of knowledge in
literature and it is given but we should ask our parent, grandparent rather what are their
previews life during their youth or 20’s and even if they share those experience it is not
enough, I do prefer to say journey that experience.

There is 4065 languages with different kind of variation, types of culture in each and
every country, timeline of a particular event in every country, and a lots of facts about
the world even in the universe that didn’t discover yet. In short a body of written works in
a language, time period, or culture is referred to as literature.