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What is Literature?. Composition and Literature. Various Attempts at a Definition. “imaginative” writing in the sense of fiction—writing which is not literally true
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What is Literature? Composition and Literature
Various Attempts at a Definition • “imaginative” writing in the sense of fiction—writing which is not literally true • If literature is “creative or imaginative” does this mean history, philosophy and natural science are uncreative and unimaginative? • Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech
Attempts at a Definition • Language that draws attention to itself • A conscious organization of language • A question of what people do to writing as of what writing does to them • A discourse that serves no practical purpose • A title given by critics • Any kind of writing which for some reason or another somebody values highly
Can we define literature? • If we can’t even do that, then how do we know what is “good” literature? • What are the merits of even studying literature? • Should there be a literary “body” of texts that everyone reads as “THE” good stuff?
What about this idea? “All literary works are rewritten, if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them; indeed, there is no reading of a work which is not also a re-writing”
What about this? “The unquestioned ‘great tradition’ of the “literary canon” has to be recognized as a “construct” fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a certain time. There is no such thing as a literary work or tradition which is valuable in itself, regardless of what anyone might have said or come to say about it. “Value” is a transitive term.”
Writing about Literature • How can I write about Literature effectively if I do not have a definition of what it is or a measure of what makes one literature “good” or better than another?
