What is literature?

[Sabo]

You've probably discussed the topic before, but it struck me while reading the last few days posts about rap and Pink Floyd that people seem to have very different ideas on what is literature.

So what is literature? This is of course an eternal question in literary criticism, with several extreme positions. Russian formalism accentuated the use of literary devices; it has been said about one of the Russian Formalists that art, according to him, was "is a sum of literary and artistic devices that the artist manipulates to craft his work." On the other side of the scale you might find excerpts from a phone book published as poetry: a text becomes a work of art because of the intention of the poet. In the discussion on the forum I've been surprised to meet the very old idea that something can not be (a great) work of art because it is too profane. Apparently the literature is still judged after its moral content.

Then there is also the classical opposition between the craft and art, but let's not go there.

I personally-if anything-am mainly a follower of the intentionalist approach: if somebody made/wrote something that meant something to him, if he or she saw it as art, then it is art. Maybe it's not always great art, maybe I would like to burn it, but it's art.

How about you?

[Asa Adams]

Miram-Webster Defines Literature as:
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

Make Note of the first. This brings into contemplation, the culture behind Lit. This is a good representation of your "Art" opinion.

[holdencaulfield]

You've probably discussed the topic before, but it struck me while reading the last few days posts about rap and Pink Floyd that people seem to have very different ideas on what is literature.

which posts about rap and floyd you had in mind while posting this?

the popularity of a literary work (like other arts) is often determined by the popularity of the writer.if tomorrow john updike writes something even cheesier than j.k. rowling, it will be considered as "literature" but if someone lesser known manages to write a pretty serious work on modern life, it will be, at best, "pseudo-literature".

you are right when you say ""if somebody made/wrote something that meant something to him, if he or she saw it as art, then it is art." art is personal.it is for the artist.
the poet muses and the world overhears.

[sHaRp12]

Human expression by the form of written words in verses.

[Virgil]

I personally-if anything-am mainly a follower of the intentionalist approach: if somebody made/wrote something that meant something to him, if he or she saw it as art, then it is art. Maybe it's not always great art, maybe I would like to burn it, but it's art.

How about you?

This is a great idea for a thread, Sabo. I'm torn between what you call the intentionalist approach and what I'll call a cultural approach. What I mean by that is that a culture, collectively and through discussion and debate, chooses what it considers literature. Some might consider the phone book a work of literature (post modern critics consider any text to be, if not quite on equal quality, worthy of consideration), but those are so few that one can hardly say that a phone book is literature. However, a culture does informally (and sometimes formally) decide what works are literature and what works are just written material.

[Sabo]

which posts about rap and floyd you had in mind while posting this?

For example, in rap-thread, no 16:

It is not just the explicitness that disturbs and offends me - it is the combination of the explicitness and the devalued, basic, and shameful topics.
I am not willing to compare rap lyrics with any form of literature.

ShoutGrace didn't dismiss all rap, only the sort that bothered her because of its explicitness. That is: if the content is unappropriated, it's not literature. This surprised me.

In Pink Floyd-thread, no 1:

In my opinion, a lot of Pink Floyd's lyrics are very similar to lit etc.

Why "very similar to lit"? To me, this can not be a question. Lyrics are a genre of poetry. But apparently, this is not as obvious to others. Again, I was surprised.

Miram-Webster Defines Literature

For the first, the first of the definitions in Merriam-Webster is not even close to the intentionality definition I gave. The arcaic use of word "literature" is also given as alternative no 1 in Oxford English Dictionary and better defined there:

Acquaintance with ‘letters’ or books; polite or humane learning; literary culture. Now rare and obsolescent. (The only sense in Johnson and in Todd 1818.)

This has nothing to do with the intentionality definition, which is a rather new idea.

For the second, dictionary definitions will simply not do in this metter. The literary criticism has come up with many and very different answers on the question what makes a text a piece of art. This is not kind of knowledge you will find in a dictionary like Merriam-Websters.

Anther defintion, given as no 3c by Oxford English Dic, is "(colloq.) Printed matter of any kind." This is the sense in which it will be used when we for example speak of literature in a course we are taking, as, god forbidd, in economics. But what I was talking about is closer to the old term "belles-letres", even though this is by no means a good term, since it also focuses upon the "belle", the polite, the accepted.

Human expression by the form of written words in verses.

Interesting. But would you not consider a novel literature?

a cultural approach.

Yes, there you have a very good point. This is indeed the "working definition" which the society uses, and it works in most cases, but the intriguing ones are when it doesn't-when somebody says that something isn't art, while somebody else claims the opposite. Often (as it seems to me) the people who claim that something isn't art, are provoked by the content of the work. This is now fascinating. It means that it isn't enough that the form a work will be recognizable as artistic (for example, sHaRp12's definition will get in trouble), but the content must also stay within limits of what a culture finds as appropriate material for art.

[Mark F.]

I think the main element that defines literature is the author's relationship to language. When someone reviews a film he doesn't make the same use of words as say Faulkner or Hemingway do when they write descriptive paragraphs, or dialogue.

[caesar]

Somebody once told me that there is no such thing as good and bad literature; there is only popular and unpopular literature.

[ShoutGrace]

ShoutGrace didn't dismiss all rap, only the sort that bothered her because of its explicitness. That is: if the content is unappropriated, it's not literature. This surprised me.

That is my personal partiality (opinion). I also don't like onions. Are onions objectively invalid for all people? I guess that I cannot really say that.

I think that literature is written language, that is all. Literature as Art, however, is another matter.

[Danika_Valin]

I don't have some transcendental definition of literature that Socrates (Plato) would approve of. To me, "literature" as the word is used today is merely fiction held in high regard and considered better than average. For example, if you have a romance novel that's average, it's considered "romance" or "genre fiction." If it's an exceptionally good novel it's called "literature."

[Sabo]

I think that literature is written language, that is all. Literature as Art, however, is another matter.

Exactly, but what? We can all agree that the word "literature" is sometimes used in the meaning "written text". In this broad sense, everything written is literature. In the sense you used it when you wrote that you are not willing to compare rap lyrics with any form of literature, you used it in another sense-you put a certain value into it. Were you not thinking of literature as art in that case?

I think the main element that defines literature is the author's relationship to language.

Yes, one would think that a formalistic point of view would suffice. But does it? How about texts that pretend to be documentary, but are in fact fictional? From a formal point of view, there are documentary-they use same literary devices are that type of text. Or the opposite: a documentary text that is written in a dramatized manner: the content is documentary, but the form literary. Is that literature?

[Manfred]

Who, in fact, determines what is literature, and what is not? Is it the author, or the society he lives in, or posterity?
I have heard of authors who believe that their most widely published material is garbage, and that those books were only written in order to make a living, even while the stuff they would like to be recognized for is considered to be not commercial enough for publication.
I have heard of others who believed themselves to be second-rate hacks, but whom posterity deemed otherwise.
What, or whom, is the real barometer; sales, critical acclaim, or enduring popularity?

[Danika_Valin]

I think it's a combination of the three, Manfred: sales, critical acclaim AND enduring popularity. Literature, at least in my view, is a word that is very versatile and has no single meaning. What may be literature to some may not be literature to others. The read barometer is what the population collectively decides is good reading.

[mono]

I like your idea of an intentional approach to the definition of literature, Sabo, and cannot agree more, but I suppose I never had a definite word for it.
To a degree, I even believe that anything written can seem classified as literature - everything from Charles Dickens on my bookshelf, poetry, the dictionary and thesaurus nearby, and my set of encyclopedias to magazines, newspapers, and DVD installation manuals. The intention, as you say in such an admirably Kantian manner, Sabo, greatly influences the type of literature, however, ranging from fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and reference to instructional and leisurely sources (magazines, etc.).
Whether for benefit or fault, however, with an intentional approach, a novel written by J.K. Rowling or Tom Clancy can seem equivalent to a novel written by James Joyce or George Eliot. Though I think it safe to say, to place the words nicely, that some works of literature appear more intelligently written qualitatively, but this depends entirely on my opinion; all authors relatively intented the same - to write, produce, and likely publish their work, while the readers (like you and I) stand as judges.

[Manfred]

I think it's a combination of the three, Manfred: sales, critical acclaim AND enduring popularity. Literature, at least in my view, is a word that is very versatile and has no single meaning. What may be literature to some may not be literature to others. The read barometer is what the population collectively decides is good reading.

These days it seems that pre-publication hype, together with the author's name recognition determines sales, and without this there is little prospect of critical acclaim. Maybe it has always been this way, I don't know. If that is the case, publishers are the ones who determine what is literature for the moment, and only time can tell if something will be considered great literature. The author may never know his historical status.
For example, everything written by Grishim is an immediate best-seller, but most are imminantly forgetable. Few "pop" novels go on to be considered classics. Otherwise, Jacqueline Suzanne would be considered one of the greatest of all time.