Defining Literary Criteria

[BienvenuJDC]

There are at least two posted threads currently on the forum pertaining to whether particular pieces are in fact literature. To better understand the definition of literature, I feel that we should explore some criteria to ascertain whether any such category or piece of work is in fact literature. I checked Webster (not that {he} is an authority) to get a start. Anyone can surely disagree with Webster's simplified definitions.

1 archaic : literary culture

2 : the production of literary work especially as an occupation

3 a
(1) : writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest
(2) : an example of such writings <what came out, though rarely literature, was always a roaring good story — People>
b : the body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age
c : the body of writings on a particular subject <scientific literature> d : printed matter (as leaflets or circulars) <campaign literature>

4 : the aggregate of a usually specified type of musical compositions

While we all may disagree as to what makes Great Literature, Classic Literature, and just good reading material, I think that opinions make a pathetic and indecisive standard by which base these things.

Please share your ideas of the criteria needed to make Literature.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Yes, I've responded in the Harry Potter thread. In short for me it comes down to 1) quality, aesthetic merit and 2) some sort of wider critical consensus. A text has to be able to stand up to further enquiry.

And yes I would agree that just because a person may or may not have liked a book doesn't qualify that as literature to any real degree at all.

[Jozanny]

In terms of genre, however, a literary work incorporates a worldview subject to interpretation, which is not always the case of commercial fiction. A Writers' Market editor used Grisham as an example, but I will use another: Dreiser's An American Tragedy is about a murder, but it is not a mystery a la Doyle and his Sherlock Holmes.

One can say Holmes signifies X, and maybe even write an article on the evolution of detective fiction, but Dreiser's book is eons removed from this and embraids a variety of elements, including the humanity of Clyde Griffiths. There are no easy cut and dried rules about this Bienvenu.

[PeterL]

I repeat that if one intends a specialized meaning then the definitions should be given at the beginning of a discussion.

Lit·er·a·ture
–noun
1. writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.
2. the entire body of writings of a specific language, period, people, etc.: the literature of England.
3. the writings dealing with a particular subject: the literature of ornithology.
4. the profession of a writer or author.
5. literary work or production.
6. any kind of printed material, as circulars, leaflets, or handbills: literature describing company products.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literature

[BienvenuJDC]

Great post, Peter. There is one thing that I see right away. While one could call ANY writing, or printed material, literature in accordance with #6, I do not think that is the context of the majority of discussions here at this site. It might be wise to refer to pamphlets and such as, Printed Literature to specify a difference from Literary Works. For the sake of this thread, we ought to disregard defining Printed Literature from the discussion since it could literally be anything under the sun.

Would anyone disagree?

[kiki1982]

What do you think about this German wikipedia entry:


Literatur ist im weitesten Sinn der Bereich mündlich (etwa durch Versformen und Rhythmus) oder schriftlich fixierter sprachlicher Zeugnisse. In einem engeren Sinne wird unter Literatur der Bereich von Texten verstanden, die Gegenstand der Kunstdiskussion werden.


Literature is in the widest sense the array of orally (perhaps through forms of verse or rhythm) or written fixed language accounts. In its more narrow sense, literature is understood as the array of texts which become the object of art discussion.

I love the Germans :D.

Indeed, books are written things, but they should become an object of discussion or at least offer the possibility, otherwise there is nothing to it, is there? And that excludes naturally, 'I like it' - 'I didn't' type of pointless banter.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Great post, Peter. There is one thing that I see right away. While one could call ANY writing, or printed material, literature in accordance with #6, I do not think that is the context of the majority of discussions here at this site. It might be wise to refer to pamphlets and such as, Printed Literature to specify a difference from Literary Works. For the sake of this thread, we ought to disregard defining Printed Literature from the discussion since it could literally be anything under the sun.

Would anyone disagree?

I might add that I think one of faults in trying to arrive at a satisfactory "checklist" as to what determines literature in the sense you mean it - a higher form of art - is that it is not really a way to approach it. I think it is a valid question and one that you are more than entitled to ask, but I think that overall it is not how one should really respond to art. It feels a little bit like standing in front of the Mona Lisa with a clipboard and marker pen ticking boxes as to its merits if you get my meaning?

I stand by that a work has to possess an essence of quality, of aesthetic or be of intellectual merit etc, and that larger critical opinions are valid, but overall I do feel a little uneasy at trying to place labels on art beyond this point because, quite often, the complexities of art are quite above all of this really.

Don’t take that as a criticism of you, it is not, rather a general sort of criticism against the potential of trying to reduce art into something smaller than it is.

[JCamilo]

This definition does not work.
To judge if a text have aesthetic merit from the literary point of view, thus know by which critery I must judge (Since a book does not have exactly the sameaesthetic merit from the point of view of painting criteries) I must admit beforehand the text is literature (since a fruit cake will always fail to have aesthetic literary merits, so there is no point to apply this judgment to it).
Hence, to say that a book of a writer X - lets call him, Worstthandanbrown, a finish writer, have no aesthetic merit rom the point of view of literary vallues, I can only be fair and correct if I seek (not finding) those vallues and doing so, I just admited its literature... crap, but selling more than Mao-tsé.

[BienvenuJDC]

Neely, by that standard, I would not qualify some of Picasso's works as art. I think that some of his works appear on a grade school level. Does that mean that they are not art?

[LitNetIsGreat]

By what standard? I have already said a checklist is no way to judge or to value art. You are the one defining what literature is or isn't, I am not. I have already said that art is above all of that and I am unhappy with going further any than what I said in the other thread. You see this is the problem with trying to define art (or literature) beyond the basic, it just doesn't work and quite right too.

[The Comedian]

I've always loved one sports talk show host's simple criteria for whether a particular player should be inducted into a "hall of fame." These criteria are as follows (in the form of questions):

1. Were you great?
2. Were you great for long enough?

Simple, subjective (admittedly), but so visceral. . .

I think the same can address the "is it literature?" question.

Is the book great?
Was it great for long enough? (does it stand up to the time & criticism).

Of course, under these criteria no immediately contemporary text can enter into the discussion, but I'm fine with that.

[Virgil]

Under the literary critical movement known as New Historicism (of which I am not particularly a fan) all written texts are part of a culture's literature, including a phone book.


New Historicism is a school of literary theory, grounded in critical theory, that developed in the 1980s, primarily through the work of the critic Stephen Greenblatt, and gained widespread influence in the 1990s.[1]

New Historicists aim simultaneously to understand the work through its historical context and to understand cultural and intellectual history through literature, which documents the new discipline of the history of ideas. Michel Foucault based his approach both on his theory of the limits of collective cultural knowledge and on his technique of examining a broad array of documents in order to understand the episteme of a particular time. New Historicism is claimed to be a more neutral approach to historical events, and to be sensitive towards different cultures.

H. Aram Veeser, introducing an anthology of essays, The New Historicism (1989), noted some key assumptions that continually reappear in New Historicist discourse; they were:

that every expressive act is embedded in a network of material practices;
that every act of unmasking, critique and opposition uses the tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes;
that literary and non-literary "texts" circulate inseparably;
that no discourse, imaginative or archival, gives access to unchanging truths, nor expresses inalterable human nature;
that a critical method and a language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Historicism

I don't particularly disagree with the notion that all written things are part of a body of literature, but implied in there is that a work of great imaginative literature is the equal of that phone book, and well, I can't go for that. As an act of understanding a culture I can go along with that notion, but as an evaluative tool of what constitutes great literature, it's rather useless.

[BienvenuJDC]

I've always loved one sports talk show host's simple criteria for whether a particular player should be inducted into a "hall of fame." These criteria are as follows (in the form of questions):

1. Were you great?
2. Were you great for long enough?

Simple, subjective (admittedly), but so visceral. . .

I think the same can address the "is it literature?" question.

Is the book great?
Was it great for long enough? (does it stand up to the time & criticism).

Of course, under these criteria no immediately contemporary text can enter into the discussion, but I'm fine with that.

Very good....now...

What is the criteria for greatness & what is the criteria for "long enough"?

(I'm just like the three year old who keeps asking "But why"?):troll:

[Quark]

What is the criteria for greatness & what is the criteria for "long enough"?

I don't think you can get more specific than that. Great literature is exactly that: literature that has been determined great. More to the point, it's literature that's taught in classes, written about in scholarship, republished as classics, talked about and respected amongst the educated elite. That's really all it is. I get the sense that you're searching after some platonic idea behind the word "literature," but there isn't one there. Great literature is simply a group of texts--gathered together for different reasons--and the path that one work took to get into the canon can be entirely different than the reason another text got there. If you want to ask why a particular work is considered great literature, you can find out why with some research. These decisions are not capricious, but they are specific to each work, author, or genre. The decision to canonize Moby Dick in the early to mid twentieth century was undertaken for much different reasons than the effort right now to make Elizabeth Gaskell more prominent. Eventually, though, these efforts will be smoothed over, and all we will notice is that both Melville and Gaskell are great literature. Yet, if you want to know why this happened, you have to uncover these decisions. The tag "great literature" is applied only after a lot of effort has been expended by certain groups and their decision is generally accepted by the relevant people.

[ktm5124]

I don't think you can get more specific than that. Great literature is exactly that: literature that has been determined great. More to the point, it's literature that's taught in classes, written about in scholarship, republished as classics, talked about and respected amongst the educated elite. That's really all it is. I get the sense that you're searching after some platonic idea behind the word "literature," but there isn't one there. Great literature is simply a group of texts--gathered together for different reasons--and the path that one work took to get into the canon can be entirely different than the reason another text got there. If you want to ask why a particular work is considered great literature, you can find out why with some research. These decisions are not capricious, but they are specific to each work, author, or genre. The decision to canonize Moby Dick in the early to mid twentieth century was undertaken for much different reasons than the effort right now to make Elizabeth Gaskell more prominent. Eventually, though, these efforts will be smoothed over, and all we will notice is that both Melville and Gaskell are great literature. Yet, if you want to know why this happened, you have to uncover these decisions. The tag "great literature" is applied only after a lot of effort has been expended by certain groups and their decision is generally accepted by the relevant people.

But if you just take great literature to be canonical literature, then it seems difficult to reconcile great literature with canon reform. If a hundred-year-old novel has been recently introduced into the canons, then was this novel always great, in spite of a one-hundred-year consensus to the contrary? And if a novel that has been in the canons for fifty or a hundred years is suddenly excluded from the canons, and goes out of fashion, is it no longer great?

How do you decide which to accept - the consensus of the present, or the consensus of the past? And if we trust the critical opinion of the present over that of the past, how can we trust the opinion of the present in anticipation of the future?

[ktm5124]

3 a
(1) : writings in prose or verse; especially : writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest


I can't find any objections to this definition, except that it excludes the oral.

I think it might also be worth suggesting that what is literature to some is not literature to others. In other words, you can only qualify literature relative to time, place, and population. The oral traditions of some totemic tribe might not be literature to us, though it be literature to them. Furthermore, the literature of a nation's past might not be the literature of that nation's present. Perhaps literature is something that can only be regarded in conjunction with eras and geographies.

[Quark]

But if you just take great literature to be canonical literature

Just look over LitNet for a while. The authors called great are almost always canonical ones. There's a little bit of deviation here and there, but not much. And why should there be? Those are the authors that are taught in schools and talked about generally, so those authors will be the ones people read. The canon is always going to have great influence on our conception of great literature.


If a hundred-year-old novel has been recently introduced into the canons, then was this novel always great, in spite of a one-hundred-year consensus to the contrary? And if a novel that has been in the canons for fifty or a hundred years is suddenly excluded from the canons, and goes out of fashion, is it no longer great?

You don't have to say "if." That's exactly what's happened. Plenty of works that have been considered great for most of their existence have recently been downgraded. The works of Sir Walter Scott were considered one of the heights of British literature for most of their existence, but in last few decades they've dropped away. He's almost a minor novelist now. Yet, some writers fare better over time. I mentioned Melville earlier, and he's the prime example of this. What counts as great literature has changed over time. That's why I'm saying it helps to understand the historical path a text has taken to greatness, rather than trying to find some ideal qualities that all great literature shares. There simply is no single set of qualities that define literature. The dictionary definitions that have been offered make this quite clear. They point to the high quality of the writing or the wide-reaching, universal meanings of the text. Those are not specific criteria. They're catch-all phrases that leave wiggle room from the historical changes that I'm describing. What makes something "universal" is going change over time, as is what's considered fine writing. You're not going to learn much about literature by approaching it from these hopelessly vague criteria. You're better off looking at individual works and describing why that one work qualifies as literature. With a little bit of thought and research, one can find good reasons for that.

[Jozanny]

Quark: Scott was a good pick. I did not know that Virginia Woolf contributed to The New Republic until recently, but evidently Scott was fading even before Woolf killed herself, as her piece is an appreciation of his merit--if the editors highlight it again, I will see if I can snatch it up.

As to what this thread is in quest of, this is why I prefer a phrase like "literary genre", but beyond that I have nothing further to add.

[mal4mac]

Plenty of works that have been considered great for most of their existence have recently been downgraded. The works of Sir Walter Scott... Melville... What counts as great literature has changed over time. That's why I'm saying it helps to understand the historical path a text has taken to greatness, rather than trying to find some ideal qualities that all great literature shares.

Melville and Scott are 'exceptions that prove the rule'. Since the dawn of serious modern criticism (Dr Johnson?), when have Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Dante, Goethe, Dickens, Tolstoy... fallen out of favour? So, given these examples, what counts as great literature *obviously* does not change over time. So it might, indeed, be worthwile to discuss what these great works have in common. One of their most positive qualities is to suggest, through fantastic metaphors and descriptions, that to search for "the ideal" is to tilt at windmills. This doesn't mean you can't look for some qualities they have in common...

[kiki1982]

Christian Dietrich Grabbe (great figure in his time) called Goethe's Faust:

Was ist das für ein erbärmliches Gewäsch über den „Faust“! Alles erbärmlich! Gebt mir jedes Jahr 3000 Thaler, und ich will Euch in drei Jahren einen Faust schreiben, dass Ihr die Pestilenz kriegt!

What is this sordid growth over Faust! Everything sordid! Give me every year 3000 Taler (type of money) and I will write you a Faust in three years that you will get the plague!

So, yes, I think this person didn't consider one of Goethe's greatest pieces a marvel.

And may I also say that the romantic poets like Shelley were not always, by the critics, deemed worth studying. It was Bloom who picked them up again.

[PeterL]

Great post, Peter. There is one thing that I see right away. While one could call ANY writing, or printed material, literature in accordance with #6, I do not think that is the context of the majority of discussions here at this site. It might be wise to refer to pamphlets and such as, Printed Literature to specify a difference from Literary Works. For the sake of this thread, we ought to disregard defining Printed Literature from the discussion since it could literally be anything under the sun.


If someone is discussing literature without modifying that word from the beginning, then the discussion is of any printed material. The easy way through this discussion is that people should define their terms and not assume that anyone else would understand exactly what they mean through mind-reading.


I can't find any objections to this definition, except that it excludes the oral.

I think it might also be worth suggesting that what is literature to some is not literature to others. In other words, you can only qualify literature relative to time, place, and population. The oral traditions of some totemic tribe might not be literature to us, though it be literature to them. Furthermore, the literature of a nation's past might not be the literature of that nation's present. Perhaps literature is something that can only be regarded in conjunction with eras and geographies.

Spoken language is not literature. Literature is written.

[Quark]

Melville and Scott are 'exceptions that prove the rule'. Since the dawn of serious modern criticism (Dr Johnson?), when have Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Dante, Goethe, Dickens, Tolstoy... fallen out of favour? So, given these examples, what counts as great literature *obviously* does not change over time. So it might, indeed, be worthwile to discuss what these great works have in common. One of their most positive qualities is to suggest, through fantastic metaphors and descriptions, that to search for "the ideal" is to tilt at windmills. This doesn't mean you can't look for some qualities they have in common...

That's a total non sequitor. The degree to which these things change isn't what's at stake here. What's important is how they got to hold the respect they do. And what you're suggesting is that there's one or a set of criteria that they've all been weighed against, and that those criteria haven't changed over time. That's what is a little naive. Even when you're discussing someone like (let's take one of your examples) Shakespeare, you can go back and look at how his reputation is the construction of many different people over the course of time--whether it be Dr. Johnson (again, your example) defending how the plays mix genres or Coleridge pointing out the excellent poetry. It's a cumulative effort undertaken by many different people with different ideas of literature that turns a writer into a highly respected and great author. It's not like one mind looked over all of literature and decided that only certain works are great. If it were, then, yes, you might find discover some meaningful common denominator. But, that's just not the case. So you're better off looking at specific works, authors, and genres, and asking what makes those literature. There are specific answers to those questions.

I understand the allure of finding some literary X-factor. If you could pin down exactly what makes everything literature, it would be an incredible boon to readers. You could just skim for that literary morsel. But, it's an illusion. There are different reasons to read different literary works, and to miss that fact would lead to misinterpretation (and just missing out). There's no single set of literatary qualities that you can discover in all works (and then cast away the rest). I know it's annoying, but you have to read the works patiently and do your research to know why a text is considered great.


If someone is discussing literature without modifying that word from the beginning, then the discussion is of any printed material. The easy way through this discussion is that people should define their terms and not assume that anyone else would understand exactly what they mean through mind-reading.

I don't think you have to read minds. The posts above show that the discussion is of "great literature"--as defined by definition 3 a. in the OP--and not "any printed material." The thread's history defines the bounds of the conversation if the title doesn't.

[kelby_lake]

Spoken language is not literature. Literature is written.

I was about to say that :D

[Virgil]

Great literature and what is considered cannonical is determined by writers and people with PhDs collectively. It's a group (therefore collective) decision and it can and does change over time. Hey they are the experts. For the most part I usuallly agree with them, but there are times I dissent and either promote a work that the cannon under rates (say Rudyard Kipling's Kim) or stand against the cannon that I feel over rates (say Joyce's Portrait of the Artist or Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway). But they are the experts. They earn a living by reading and re-reading the works over and over and teaching them and reading all the criticism and commentary. They have a right to establish the cannon. You're free to disagree.

[stlukesguild]

Virgil... I don't think that the determination of what amounts to the canonical is quite so limited. I would suggest that subsequent writers and what Virginia Woolf referred to as the "common reader" (the passionate and informed reader who may not have the formal degree in literature but rather an abiding passion for good writing) are just as influential. A work like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is certainly canonical according to the academics, while it is largely unread among the common readers and a many of the writers. A book like The Three Musketeers... or even The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, are of little merit according to academic critical judgment... yet they remain popular with the larger reading audience... and perhaps even certain writers... well beyond the popularity that might be attributed to a mere fad... a period piece... so that one is almost prepared to grudgingly admit to something of a minor "classic" status.

[mal4mac]

But if you just take great literature to be canonical literature, then it seems difficult to reconcile great literature with canon reform. If a hundred-year-old novel has been recently introduced into the canons, then was this novel always great, in spite of a one-hundred-year consensus to the contrary? And if a novel that has been in the canons for fifty or a hundred years is suddenly excluded from the canons, and goes out of fashion, is it no longer great?

Can you give an example of a novel that was held to be rubbish for 100 years by all respectable critics, but then (somehow!) immediately attained canonical status? 'Entering the Canon ' is a gradual process that might indeed take 100 years, but the novels attaining canonical status need to get the backing of the majority of serious critics over that hundred year period.

Can you give an example of 'sudden exclusion form the canon'? As books enter the canon, then other books must leave. But it is, surely, a gradual drift. When does, say, a minor play by Shakespeare become excluded because a major novel by Dickens is accepted? November 14 1917? And of course, some critics will keep Shakespeare and reject Dickens. The edges of the canon are fuzzy.

[MarkBastable]

Every year when the shortlist for the Turner Prize (http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/)is announced, the mainstream British media launch into a round of huffing bourgeois rhetoric consisting of snide denouncements of the nominated artists and fatuous editorials demanding "Is it Art?"

I heard one of the organisers of the contest on the radio the other evening, and he said, "Well, there's nothing here that isn't in a form that's been established as Art for decades - so, yeah, it's Art. But that's a boring question. The more interesting question would be 'Is it good Art?"

I think the problem is even more straightforward with literature because there's no argument over form as there often is with contemporary art ("...but it's just a pile of bricks!..."). So I'd say that the issue resolves itself into two possible questions.

If you think that 'literature' is by definition 'the good stuff' - then the argument comes down to What's good?

But if you think that 'literature' is anything that complies with the broad definition of 'books' - then the argument has to be What's good?'

So this isn't about what defines literature, I'd say, because that doesn't really move the conversation along. It's about whether or not there's any objective definition of 'good'.

[blazeofglory]

Generally two things are looked for in literature: first, aesthetic excellence-something that glues readers to literature, second, philosophy. There are thrillers or cheap rated novels that cannot be literature. This is a generally accepted standard in point of fact. But defining certain criteria for literature is a great challenge and we cannot confine it within a few sets of principles implied by a few schools of literary theories. Generally what we take literature is a westernized notion of it, starting of course with the Aristotelian principle of it. But it encompasses broader scopes and eastern – both Chinese and India principles of literature. India for instance is rich in literature, given its rich creative heritages. The Mahabharata is such a great epic which has no example in the world of literature.
Therefore defining literary criteria or spans within a few principles of western literary theories is a wrong and unjustifiable endeavour and of course it transcends this limit. Literature cannot be outside the domain of mythology also. What flaws most of critics of the west commit in point of fact are they have not studied eastern literary principles and in fact have narrowed down the domain of literary criticism or principles to a small range only

[Virgil]

Virgil... I don't think that the determination of what amounts to the canonical is quite so limited. I would suggest that subsequent writers and what Virginia Woolf referred to as the "common reader" (the passionate and informed reader who may not have the formal degree in literature but rather an abiding passion for good writing) are just as influential. A work like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is certainly canonical according to the academics, while it is largely unread among the common readers and a many of the writers. A book like The Three Musketeers... or even The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, are of little merit according to academic critical judgment... yet they remain popular with the larger reading audience... and perhaps even certain writers... well beyond the popularity that might be attributed to a mere fad... a period piece... so that one is almost prepared to grudgingly admit to something of a minor "classic" status.

I agree. But works like The Three Musketeers and Lord of the Rings have stood the test of time and have resonated in the popular culture. There are books that are popular for a few years and there are books that are popular across genereations. I would say there is something to what you say for those books that span generations. Critics may not be able to put their finger on why they are so popular but there is something about them that transcends critique. Yes, they become classics in this manner.

On the flip side, there is those works that get immediate critical notice and kudos, but die out within a few years. Just look at some of the Nobel Prize winners and you'll see a hand full.

[BienvenuJDC]

I would like to say that some of you are way too wordy.

(okay, I'm done with that thought)

[JCamilo]

It does not matter who is reading, what matter is the continuous reading, ince the group that may be reading a given writer in 1654 France may not be the same in 1923 Germany.
This continuous reading is however just an evidence that we are talking about a great (in all his degrees) work of literature, not what makes it great.

[Quark]

Virgil... I don't think that the determination of what amounts to the canonical is quite so limited. I would suggest that subsequent writers and what Virginia Woolf referred to as the "common reader" (the passionate and informed reader who may not have the formal degree in literature but rather an abiding passion for good writing) are just as influential. A work like Joyce's Finnegan's Wake is certainly canonical according to the academics, while it is largely unread among the common readers and a many of the writers. A book like The Three Musketeers... or even The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, are of little merit according to academic critical judgment... yet they remain popular with the larger reading audience... and perhaps even certain writers... well beyond the popularity that might be attributed to a mere fad... a period piece... so that one is almost prepared to grudgingly admit to something of a minor "classic" status.

While I agree that educated readers play a role in making a work great, I think it might be helpful to remember that there's a difference between a widely appreciated book and a truly great one. This becomes pretty noticeable when we try to define readers who read classics and readers who read those "minor classic[s]." Someone who knows Shakespeare's plays back and forth would probably be called intellectual or artistic. Yet, those who read Tolkien are just called nerds. There's an assumption here that reading Shakespeare gives you some experience or knowledge that's understandable in some larger social context. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is usually considered be a solitary pleasure that doesn't relate to anything larger than its fantastic world. Reading Tolkien is thought to be a cultural cul-de-sac. It doesn't lead to anything. So I think there's an important difference between popular or "minor" classics and great literature (as defined by the posts in this thread).

Just to be clear, though, I completely agree that it's more than PHD carrying literary critics who define what classics are. Great literature is a huge leviathan made up of the contributions of lots of different people. While literary critics play a large part, so do publishers, general readers, students, and artists. Professors are not going to keep assigning a text if it doesn't get a reaction from anybody. Publishers won't reissue a classic if it won't sell enough copies. And, the text will disappear entirely if future artists and general readers don't keep it alive through educated discourse.

[JBI]

While I agree that educated readers play a role in making a work great, I think it might be helpful to remember that there's a difference between a widely appreciated book and a truly great one. This becomes pretty noticeable when we try to define readers who read classics and readers who read those "minor classic[s]." Someone who knows Shakespeare's plays back and forth would probably be called intellectual or artistic. Yet, those who read Tolkien are just called nerds. There's an assumption here that reading Shakespeare gives you some experience or knowledge that's understandable in some larger social context. On the other hand, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is usually considered be a solitary pleasure that doesn't relate to anything larger than its fantastic world. Reading Tolkien is thought to be a cultural cul-de-sac. It doesn't lead to anything. So I think there's an important difference between popular or "minor" classics and great literature (as defined by the posts in this thread).

Just to be clear, though, I completely agree that it's more than PHD carrying literary critics who define what classics are. Great literature is a huge leviathan made up of the contributions of lots of different people. While literary critics play a large part, so do publishers, general readers, students, and artists. Professors are not going to keep assigning a text if it doesn't get a reaction from anybody. Publishers won't reissue a classic if it won't sell enough copies. And, the text will disappear entirely if future artists and general readers don't keep it alive through educated discourse.

Meh, it's all sophistry. If we just begin to scale geographic space, our conception of minor and major bend significantly. Is Keats major - certainly not more than Issa - where does the line get drawn then - if we are readers of great literature, we are by necessity limiting great literature to what we read - for every Dickens there is a Soseki, for every Plato there is a Zhuangzi.

Penguin has failed significantly to be the determinant of "classic" in that its limit on certain geographic space is often scary. It really falls to academics and academic publishers to begin to create notions of classic - but even those are regional. Even popular literature is regional, as everyone here discusses Harry Potter, but nobody is really mentioning Jin Yong despite their comparable mass-appeal.

Now, we can expand this and question further based on space - what is the power and politics behind translation - how is it that there emerged in the last 50 or so years such a great number of American translators of Japanese, and how has Japanese form been absorbed into American poetics, which it has. The reason is quite simple; American interest groups, notably the military, amongst others, coughed billions into Japanese studies after World War 2, resulting in more Japan specialists, who were to assist with "understanding those foreigners." As a consequence, we get great artwork - and nobody will disagree that Japanese prints, and Japanese poetry have made it into our definition of "Literature".

Now, let us shift space a little bit - in China, due to an almost accidental translation, the Italian epistolary children's novel Cuore has achieved a sort of classic status. I doubt many here have heart of it, but it remains as valid a classic there as Lewis Carrol's work does here.

Now, when contemplating space - something as major in "Literary status" as you will, such as Ulysses cannot hold ground outside of an English speaking culture without losing much, if not almost all of its appeal. Likewise, something like Yukio Mashima's work is able to be more famous outside of Japan than in (especially amongst literary elites).

Now, the big argument people make is the inability of some works to translate. Bloom makes that a point in excluding all Chinese works from his Canon. But does that hold?



Cold blows the northern wind,
Tick falls the snow.
Be kind to me, love me,
Take my hand and go with me.
Yet she lingers, yet she havers!
There is no time to lose
.................

From The Book of Songs, poem 41, tr. Arthur Waley - is there not something beyond that?

The question of space to me seems essential to the idea of literature. I will admit it; I know nothing about Estonian literature, and could not name one Estonian author. What does that imply? To what extent is the idea of literature now limited to specialization.

Even the academy has moved on; area studies is already being absorbed as literary studies, or history, or politics, or whatever. The whole Great Books notion has fallen, and academics are specialists rather than some sort of super-knowledge-laden aesthetes.

I think we all just need to move on. There is no definition - there is merely a judgment each individual chooses to make, and quite simply, we are all limited in our scope. For every major author who we agree upon, there is probably a more major author who we neglect. I bet most people here have heard the name Chaucer, but I can almost guarantee the number who have heard the name Su Shi are countable on one's fingers. Everyone know Emily Dickinson? how many know Li Qingzhao? How many know Sei Shonagon, or any other number of people from any other number of other cultures?


Tell me, what is literature then; as it is, minor literature seems to be what most of us here talk about (minor in the mass-population opinion) - what makes it "major" in our perception, however, is not that it is somehow the most important, but that it is the most important to us.

[Quark]

Meh, it's all sophistry.

It could be. I'm using language offered in the most preliminary of ways by posters who are not sure they know what they're talking about. At least it has some clear argument, though. I had to read you post a couple of times and I'm still not sure I understand your point. You've bundled together several ideas (the importance of regionalism, university presses, translation, more things) to make this rather garbled plea for a more personal evaluation of literature. This makes it a little hard to respond, but I'll try to touch on some of the important issues here.


If we just begin to scale geographic space, our conception of minor and major bend significantly. Is Keats major - certainly not more than Issa - where does the line get drawn then - if we are readers of great literature, we are by necessity limiting great literature to what we read - for every Dickens there is a Soseki, for every Plato there is a Zhuangzi

The question of space to me seems essential to the idea of literature. I will admit it; I know nothing about Estonian literature, and could not name one Estonian author. What does that imply?

Agreed. In fact, I was hoping this would be implicit in what I said in my earlier posts. I mentioned that literary reputation of depends on the group effort of many different readers and institutions, and inherent in the idea of a group is some location or other feature that sets it off from everybody else. Now you can define this community of readers by any feature you want. It can be geographical, linguistic, historical, sociological, or whatever, but there is something that sets apart what you and I might consider great literature and what's considered great literature in Japan or wherever (let's stick to just geographical differences here).


Penguin has failed significantly to be the determinant of "classic" in that its limit on certain geographic space is often scary. It really falls to academics and academic publishers to begin to create notions of classic - but even those are regional. Even popular literature is regional, as everyone here discusses Harry Potter, but nobody is really mentioning Jin Yong despite their comparable mass-appeal.

This is probably a little beside the point. If you think academic publishing establishes "classics" more than the commercial press, that's fine. I would say that the notion of "classic" (if we're confining the discussion to English literature) predates academic study of English literature, though, so what you're saying can only be partially true at best.


Now, we can expand this and question further based on space - what is the power and politics behind translation - how is it that there emerged in the last 50 or so years such a great number of American translators of Japanese, and how has Japanese form been absorbed into American poetics, which it has. The reason is quite simple; American interest groups, notably the military, amongst others, coughed billions into Japanese studies after World War 2, resulting in more Japan specialists, who were to assist with "understanding those foreigners." As a consequence, we get great artwork - and nobody will disagree that Japanese prints, and Japanese poetry have made it into our definition of "Literature".

The transition here is mysterious. I'm not sure how translation relates to your larger point. If you saying that our notion of literature changes based on the availability of some texts and unavailability of others, then I again agree. I've been saying that historical changes play a key role in what literature becomes respected inside our culture.


To what extent is the idea of literature now limited to specialization.

Even the academy has moved on; area studies is already being absorbed as literary studies, or history, or politics, or whatever. The whole Great Books notion has fallen, and academics are specialists rather than some sort of super-knowledge-laden aesthetes.

What you're talking about might come to pass, but it's certainly not a reality yet. You're right that within literary studies the focus is highly specialized, and it takes in a range of writers who are considered great and others not so much. If you study 19th C French literature of the urban center, you're probably going to look at both Honore de Balzac and Eugene Sue--even though most educated readers call the former great and the latter of secondary importance. Some time down the road this highly specialized and impartial way of regarding every literary figure who has to do with your field may radiate out to the rest of educated society. It hasn't yet, however. Most educated readers will still say that you should read Balzac and that Sue is cliched and uninteresting (if they've heard of Sue at all).


There is no definition - there is merely a judgment each individual chooses to make, and quite simply, we are all limited in our scope. For every major author who we agree upon, there is probably a more major author who we neglect. I bet most people here have heard the name Chaucer, but I can almost guarantee the number who have heard the name Su Shi are countable on one's fingers. Everyone know Emily Dickinson? how many know Li Qingzhao? How many know Sei Shonagon, or any other number of people from any other number of other cultures?

Well, there is a definition, and you've outlined it in your post already. All you're saying is that our concept of great literature is narrow and limited. That's probably true, but it doesn't erase the fact that there are certain works held in higher regard than others. The basis on which people make than judgment might be skewed by their own small perspective, but that judgment nonetheless remains. The whole point of the thread seemed to be about discussing why those few works actually do become classics. Is there some common denominator between them? Is there one set of criteria that all these works have been weighed against? Yet, the thread did not seem to be about individuals coming to their subjective opinions about texts. The first two posts show that that's not the direction they wanted the conversation to take:


I think that opinions make a pathetic and indecisive standard by which base these things


And yes I would agree that just because a person may or may not have liked a book doesn't qualify that as literature to any real degree at all

[MrRegular]

I don't even know why I'm trying to make a simple point here, but here it is anyway.
Literature is art, right? Art is (and should be), by nature, ambiguous. So please keep your scientific method to science and when (if) you feel the pull of inspiration, feel free to apply yourself artistically. Literature is not about feeling smart; that is the realm of criticism and def jam poetry (I'm so deep, deep as the ocean, deep as... a pan pizza).

[JBI]

The common demeanor Quark is that they almost all are written in English, and published by Penguin, and are in prose. As for your argument against specialization, maybe 15-20 years ago, but the way things are moving now? Good luck with being a renaissance specialist who doesn't read 3 other languages, or a 19th century specialist not working with continental fiction as well as others. Beyond that too, Area studies have taken much ground in literary studies, and English Literature as a discipline is really being beaten away at in favor of comparative literature and other language/area studies. I don't think someone with a pure English stream in university is likely to become tenure tracked, whereas I bet someone with a much wider range of qualifications will have an easier time, the point being that the iron tower has been expanding, as cultures have become less monotonous.


Great books don't hold, because quite simply, a lot of them aren't particularly great anymore, and nobody is really out there reading "Great Books" formally as a study. IF you are reading great books, you would be reading, by necessity, great books from everywhere, which I doubt anyone really is - there are just too many. What people are reading is a specific specialization, here mostly 19th century English novels and Dostoevsky, with some American prose thrown in. We have the translations, and the criticism in English to read books from far larger geographic zones, but why is it that the classics come down to that?

My point being, it's all a standpoint perspective. I question why people make the claims of "Literary criteria" when literary criteria as "great literature" essentially has an English in brackets around it. For instance, even the most popular of novelists, like Zola, go unmentioned on these boards. It seems that the only Italian author mentioned at all is Dante, with maybe a little Petrarch (for the Canzoniere only mind you) thrown in, and a touch of odd names every now and then.

Lets be honest, as great literature, I am not convinced Shelley's Frankenstein which has been discussed here really holds, but I would wager Pirandello does hold up.

In my experience, I think people just like to think they have some sort of formula and judgment to justify their own snobbery. Then you have people who call themselves elitists and justify it, simply by assuming they have an elite opinion, but in all honesty, people are just plowing through Penguin paperbacks and Harold Bloom or whomever's opinion without even considering that their "Great works" are really just minor.

The excuse for great reading is dependent on the idea that there is limited time. I am just questioning the validity of this statement as it assumes what the person is reading is the best there is, which is not true, as there is a lot more great work out there that one isn't reading that is perhaps better than the minor authors like the Brontës or whomever.

[MrRegular]

I don't even know why I'm trying to make a simple point here, but here it is anyway.
Literature is art, right? Art is (and should be), by nature, ambiguous. So please keep your scientific method to science and when (if) you feel the pull of inspiration, feel free to apply yourself artistically. Literature is not about feeling smart; that is the realm of criticism and def jam poetry (I'm so deep, deep as the ocean, deep as... a pan pizza).

Bah, meh, boo! Bamehboo! This is perhaps fnord the most ridiculous thing that I have every heard! To heckles with your slanders and sly deviance. Who could ever trust a man who speaks in simple points, anyway? Not I and certainly not anyone else, especially not you. So where does that leave you, little man?

[Drkshadow03]

Melville and Scott are 'exceptions that prove the rule'. Since the dawn of serious modern criticism (Dr Johnson?), when have Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Dante, Goethe, Dickens, Tolstoy... fallen out of favour? So, given these examples, what counts as great literature *obviously* does not change over time. So it might, indeed, be worthwile to discuss what these great works have in common. One of their most positive qualities is to suggest, through fantastic metaphors and descriptions, that to search for "the ideal" is to tilt at windmills. This doesn't mean you can't look for some qualities they have in common...

Not true. Dickens did fall out of favor with academics for a period.

"Although his favor with the popular audience has never waned, Dickens was, during the Modernist decades of the early 20th century, largely dismissed by academics and critics, who ignored his work as vulgar and simple." - From the Introduction of A Critical Companion to Charles Dickens: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work by Paul Davis.

Terry Eagleton makes a similar comment about Dickens waning popularity among academics in his book, Literary Theory: An Introduction.

According to this website, Dante fell out favor in the 17th century (http://www.italnet.nd.edu/Dante/text/1613.vicenza.html).

According to the book Goethe's Elective Affinities and the Critics by Astrida Orle Tantillo, "Rehberg's essay prefigures Goethe's fall from public and intellectual favor that began in the 1820s and continued well into the nineteenth century. . . . It is all too often forgotten that although Goethe had a strong circle of supporters who revered him during and after his lifetime, the Goethe cult was not a continuous phenomenon."

So given these examples, what is considered Great Literature generally does change with the time period and the change in taste and social issues. However, I will say this; I do think truly Great Literature has a way of rebounding even after falling out of favor for a little while.

[Quark]

Great books don't hold, because quite simply, a lot of them aren't particularly great anymore, and nobody is really out there reading "Great Books" formally as a study. IF you are reading great books, you would be reading, by necessity, great books from everywhere, which I doubt anyone really is - there are just too many. What people are reading is a specific specialization, here mostly 19th century English novels and Dostoevsky, with some American prose thrown in. We have the translations, and the criticism in English to read books from far larger geographic zones, but why is it that the classics come down to that?

Okay, but this doesn't really have anything to do with anything. What we're talking about is how within a community of readers certain texts rise to the top and become considered great works and other do not. You can regard that however condescending you want, but it doesn't change the fact that certain works do become great within that community. The question is why. I've already said what I think plays a role in making a work great, and it seems like you pretty much agree. All you're doing now is making value judgments (sometimes really self-serving ones) about the usefulness of what people consider "classics."


As for your argument against specialization

I didn't argue against specialization. I said that certain academic attitudes toward literature don't have much influence on the general public. You spend a lot of your post talking about what one has to do to secure a tenure track position, but most readers are not looking to get tenure.

[mal4mac]

Not true. Dickens did fall out of favor with academics for a period...

So for a short period a literary movement declared him 'out of fashion'. This doesn't defeat my argument. Tolstoy attacked Shakespeare, and no doubt you can find an example or two of other famous people/movements who have attacked all the major authors. You can't please all of the critics all of the time, but the great authors have pleased most of the critics most of the time.

Even in the 'hard sciences' you never get a total consensus, think Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. But we use Quantum Mechanics happily (otherwise we wouldn't be using your computer!) In a similar way we should take seriously what *most* critics agree on, otherwise we are will become lost in chaos of bad authors.

[JBI]

So for a short period a literary movement declared him 'out of fashion'. This doesn't defeat my argument. Tolstoy attacked Shakespeare, and no doubt you can find an example or two of other famous people/movements who have attacked all the major authors. You can't please all of the critics all of the time, but the great authors have pleased most of the critics most of the time.

Even in the 'hard sciences' you never get a total consensus, think Einstein and Quantum Mechanics. But we use Quantum Mechanics happily (otherwise we wouldn't be using your computer!) In a similar way we should take seriously what *most* critics agree on, otherwise we are will become lost in chaos of bad authors.

Most critics of what? English literature, world literature, literary studies? Who are these most critics. I am a little more international; to me what constitutes most critics is perhaps quite a wider spectrum.

I don't think most critics are commenting on all authors, let alone evaluating with a scoreboard each one. Most just work within a specialty limited to some scope.

The job of ranking authors is rather not the point of academic study of literature, and seems to only pop up in the most boring of literary criticism, which generally, like Harold Bloom's books, is without index, or real critical value.


Okay, but this doesn't really have anything to do with anything. What we're talking about is how within a community of readers certain texts rise to the top and become considered great works and other do not. You can regard that however condescending you want, but it doesn't change the fact that certain works do become great within that community. The question is why. I've already said what I think plays a role in making a work great, and it seems like you pretty much agree. All you're doing now is making value judgments (sometimes really self-serving ones) about the usefulness of what people consider "classics."



I didn't argue against specialization. I said that certain academic attitudes toward literature don't have much influence on the general public. You spend a lot of your post talking about what one has to do to secure a tenure track position, but most readers are not looking to get tenure.

No, it is true, most people aren't looking for that - but the whole idea is an academic backing, which has been used by various posters as justification - I merely wanted to point out that that academic backing has been bending for quite a while, and doesn't directly correspond to Penguin's catalogue.

The whole idea is that when the people studying these things formally begin to change, the whole culture around them slowly pushes downward - if enough change, the change becomes significant for a while, as attested by the change in academic study of literature over the past 100 years - the Canon you said is bendable, but my point is that it is ceasing to exist as the general guideline, as it has bent too thin. Education is no longer based rigidly on a set of titles, if it ever was, and the amount of flexibility by necessity leads to a change in availability of certain texts in the popular market.

I mentioned earlier the influx of Japanese works in the second half of the 20th century into American letters, and I would point out that in the 30s, people didn't know where Japanese people (including geographically putting them on the map). Now Japanese influence is undisputed; does that come from a notion of coming of age of Japan, or an acceptance of a culture, going back to older forms? How has academic acceptance changed literary culture, and how does the current climate gesture toward a different literary culture.

Truth be told, the city I live in is neither Western nor Eastern; the textbooks I worked with in high school were chosen specifically for their range of multicultural texts - Canadian literature and literary culture is by necessity multicultural now, and Frye's Great Code no longer applies

I understand that Americans have more ingrained notions of their own literary heritage as somehow unique and special, therefore are supposedly more reluctant, or perhaps more focused. But the sheer volume of scholarship on subjects outside of the "cliche authors" of the English canon is for sure going to change a literary culture that is essentially dying out. Simply put, the geographic landscapes that created this list of classics are now different; Europe enjoys a major mixing of cultures now, with the emergence of large scale immigration - different things are now the focus of translators, and people are more interested in "exotic places" written from interior rather than exterior viewpoints.

I am just suggesting that the board's idea of great literature is snobby and limited, in that it assumes a personal aesthetic to be supreme, or that great books truly are great. It goes back to the Platonic argument of whether the Gods love something because it is good, or if something is good because the Gods love it.

[mal4mac]

Most critics of what? English literature, world literature, literary studies? Who are these most critics. I am a little more international; to me what constitutes most critics is perhaps quite a wider spectrum.

I don't think most critics are commenting on all authors, let alone evaluating with a scoreboard each one. Most just work within a specialty limited to some scope.

The job of ranking authors is rather not the point of academic study of literature, and seems to only pop up in the most boring of literary criticism, which generally, like Harold Bloom's books, is without index, or real critical value.

Many critics do attempt to comment on complete canons (Fadiman, Adler, Bloom...) I don't find these authors boring, in small doses. Surely it's always interesting to read suggestions, from top critics, about what might be worth reading?

[Quark]

The whole idea is that when the people studying these things formally begin to change, the whole culture around them slowly pushes downward - if enough change, the change becomes significant for a while, as attested by the change in academic study of literature over the past 100 years - the Canon you said is bendable, but my point is that it is ceasing to exist as the general guideline, as it has bent too thin. Education is no longer based rigidly on a set of titles, if it ever was, and the amount of flexibility by necessity leads to a change in availability of certain texts in the popular market.

Academics do have some control over what get called great literature, but they're not the only ones with a say in this. Oh, if they were! Life would be great for academics. Unfortunately, though, even if you're a professor, you don't get to single-handedly decide what's the best reading. You don't even get complete control over what's great literature in your classroom. Yeah, Sei Shonogon's Pillow Book might be undervalued by the rest of society, but that doesn't mean the administration at your university is going to let you teach a class on it. Administrators want classes to fill, and that means you have to teach what general public thinks is great. This is a general public that doesn't speak four languages. It has its own agenda. Yet, they're the ones taking the classes and buying the books. If you're in charge of a university or publishing company, you have to come to some understanding with these people. You can't just push whatever the current academic fad happens to be on these people. Not only that, but you also have to come understanding with the previous criticism on these books. Really, all current academics can do is push the reputation of a text a little ways in one direction. The past criticism on a work creates a strong drag for any new radical opinion. So, when a work finally becomes established as great, it's through a massive group effort across history from academics and non-academics.

I mentioned Elizabeth Gaskell before, and I think she's an excellent example of how a writer becomes considered great. No doubt she is moving toward that standing. In 1999 she had her name added to the window above Poet's Corner. Sales of her books is up over the past fifteen years. The BBC finally did a miniseries for each of her major novels (this also happened around the turn of the millenium). There's more academic criticism from 2003-2010 on her work than was written in the preceeding twenty-five years. It's pretty easy to see a trend. This isn't a purely academic or non-academic trend, either. Both general readers and academics have embraced her, and for different reasons. Academia was overrun with historicism in the 90's and 00's, and Gaskell's sociological moments have been compared favorably with Dickens, Mayhew, Engels, etc. With the general public, though, Gaskell has been helped by the changing demographics of readers. In the US especially, fiction reading has become primarily the province of women. Female readership accounts for almost 70% of fiction readers in America. Gaskell speaks to these people. Her novels have a chick-lit aspect to them: closely-knit friendships between women, marriage plots, etc. There's a convergence of interest here that makes Gaskell great. The same kinds of things have to happen to make any work great. I don't mean that demographics have to shift or the work has to align with current academic trends. I just mean that these different groups have to come together to establish a work as great.

This is how something like Shakespeare's plays can be regarded as great literature even by people who know nothing about literature. It's because they're listening to this collective voice of various groups and institutions. And, without being able to pick apart that voice and see it as a group of disparate players with their own motivations, they ascribe to it some objective reality.

[Drkshadow03]

So for a short period a literary movement declared him 'out of fashion'. This doesn't defeat my argument. Tolstoy attacked Shakespeare, and no doubt you can find an example or two of other famous people/movements who have attacked all the major authors. You can't please all of the critics all of the time, but the great authors have pleased most of the critics most of the time.

I believe I was talking about most of the critics at that time, not just a few hold-outs, so the Tolstoy example is irrelevant.

Also, you ignored the Dante and Goethe examples. So I already did include another example or two. In fact, if you add those three plus Melville and Scott, the majority of authors (Homer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Montaigne, Dante, Goethe, Dickens, Tolstoy) you listed in the post I replied to proves Quark's case that so-called Canonical authors fall out of favor all of the time (even if only temporarily), which was exactly the opposite position you took. It would be Melville, Scott, Dante, Goethe, Dickens to your Tolstoy, Montaigne, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. The very authors you used to defend you position actually support Quark's position.