What Is Literature?

Reading, Assessing, Analyzing

What is “Literature”?

In the last 50 years, the very meaning of “Literature” and “reading” and “criticism” has undergone deep alteration

Literature:

Traditionally, literature is “imaginative” writing---writing which is not literally true

HOWEVER: the distinction between “real” and “fake” or “fact” and “fiction” isn’t always a good distinction; many classical works were non-fiction

What do we mean when we say something is “Literary”?

“Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have

literariness thrust upon them.”

Is literature dictated by context?

I’m your teacher. I have several college degrees. If I tell you it’s LITERATURE, am I to be believed?

Many works of “literature” that we study in college were constructed to BE literature, but many were not.

What qualities in form and content make a text . . .

LITERARY?

Language

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language

Literature deviates systematically from everyday speech

Language in literature draws attention to itself

--This is what the FORMALISTS thought--Russians in the early 1900s who organized literary criticism around language

When “Language” is the only criteria of “literary”, what types

of texts are ignored?

Should these types of texts be ignored? Why? Why Not?

The problem with language. . .

“The idea that there is a single, ‘normal’ language, a common currency shared equally by all members of society, is an illusion. Any actual language consists of a highly complex range of discourses, differentiated according to class, region, gender, status and so on, which can by no means be neatly unified into a single homogeneous linguistic community.”

--Terry Eagleton, literary critic and scholar

What happens when one language is preferred over

another?

Can language reveal your: class, race, ethnicity, educational level,

gender?

If literature were only based on how language were used

Everything would be poetry.

What other qualities can we look at that might help us to define the “literariness” of a text?

The truth is:

If “they” (the critics, scholars etc) say you’re literature, then you are!

If “they” say you aren’t, then you aren’t!

“Literature” is a formal, empty sort of definition.

“Literature” has no “essence.”

“Literature” is dependent upon the way people relate themselves to the writing.

Literature is Subjective

Since the 1980’s, the “literary canon” of works--a group of works “agreed upon” to be “the best” by well-known scholars and critics, has been disputed

Why do you think the “canon” was disputed?

And who forwarded the charge of dispute?

The “Canon” excluded most works that were not by white,

European males

Works of literature by women, homosexuals, and works by

individuals of varied races, classes and ethnicities were marginalized

How did this happen?

There are many ways of “writing”--but those in power recognized only one, formal way of “writing,” and this was given the higher value

Thus, the literary “canon” is a construct; it was fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a particular time.

There is no literary work or tradition that has value in and of

itself

Even Shakespeare!

In his era, Shakespeare was regarded as a hack!

It’s true! Time and circumstance has offered the value to particular texts; and this “value” is a transitive term--it will change as the people in power change and are altered, and according to the context of the reading of a particular text.

10 Years Ago

BLOGS were stupid. NOW:

Iraq War Veterans BLOGS are considered vital historic and

“literary” documents!

Revisioning the Canon:

All “literary” works are unconsciously rewritten by the

societies that read them.

Context:

Readers interpret literary works in the light of their own concerns

Readers interpret literary works in the light of a given circumstance

Readers interpret literary works in the light of a given time period

The Diary of Anne Frank:

Literature? Or Not?

HOWL by Allen Ginsberg

BANNED in its era. . .

LITERATURE? Or not?

“I Have A Dream”--

Is this speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Literature? Or Not?

Literature and “value”

You see, each of us is constructed of experiences and backgrounds and emotions and ideas and prejudices and knowledge and lack of knowledge. . .

How we each respond to a particular text is deeply entwined with our broader prejudices and belief systems.

It’s not our fault!

We’re HUMAN.

Thus, Literature is defined by:

Experience Context

Multi-cultural and Multi-ethnic Literatures

Uniquely situated to view under this broader banner of who I am and where I’m from, and how these things contribute to what I write

YOU are invited to contextualize yourself as well--who YOU are and in what context you’re reading these texts in order to understand how you ‘read’ a particular text

So: WHAT IS LITERATURE?

What constitutes a “literary” text?

What qualities will help me to determine the ‘literariness’ of a text?

YOU tell ME

At the end of this course. . .