Literature

Literature, a body of written Works, has traditionally been applied to those

imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their
authors. 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.
Literature is the foundation of humanity's cultures, beliefs, and traditions.
Whether it be poetry or prose, literature provides insight, knowledge or
wisdom, and emotion towards the person who partakes it entirely. Life is
manifested in the form of literature. Without literature, life ceases to exist.
Literature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed in
words—even when organized and written down—is counted as literature.
Those writings that are primarily informative—technical, scholarly, journalistic
—would be excluded from the rank of literature by most, though not all, critics.
Certain forms of writing, however, are universally regarded as belonging to
literature as an art. Individual attempts within these forms are said to succeed
if they possess something called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The
writer needs not even pursue it to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific
exposition might be of great literary value and a pedestrian poem of none at
all.
Usually literature is understood as a cultural institution consisting of a
literary history, literary theory and literary criticism. So it can be seen as a part
of the history of culture in the light of the most recent concepts of culture and
civilization.
Now if we define literature as an institution of culture, as Harry Levin says in
his article ‘’Literature as an Institution’’ we observe that literature is the
product of three traditions: the cultural, linguistic and literary tradition of a
society. So it is composed of its own norms, formal principles and values.
T.S. Eliot, in his famous article ‘’Tradition and the Individual Talent’’ (1919)
and ‘’The Function of Criticism’’(1923) defines literature and literary tradition in
the light of this philosophy of culture. According to him all the Works of art
form an ideal order, a hierarchy of values. In short, the Works of art, no matter
when they were produced, convey to us the values of the historical
perspectives they belong to as well as the values belonging to all times.
 Eliot, in his first article, stresses the fact that in order to be successful, a poet
should surrender his mind to a collective mind which he defines as the
collective subjectivity, that is all the minds of Europe. This is the literary
tradition of the western civilization. Thus the poet must be conscious of the
fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never the same. And
he must be aware of the fact that the mind of his own country is more
important than his own mind.
In the light of this philosophy of culture, it is obvious that there is only one
literature, one literary theory an done literary criticsm, and all the Works of art
belonging different perspectives of Western Civilization form only different
parts of the same literature.
But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing
when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of “oral
literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is not
reducible to the words on the page; they are there solely because of the craft
of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words
to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms
experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in
society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values.
The scope of literature
The purest (or, at least, the most intense) literary form is the lyric poem,
and after it comes elegiac, epic, dramatic, narrative, and expository verse. Most
theories of literary criticism base themselves on an analysis of poetry, because
the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and
purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not called poetry at all but verse.
Many novels—certainly all the world’s great novels—are literature, but there
are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered
literature (although the Chinese, possessors of one of the world’s greatest
dramatic traditions, consider their plays, with few exceptions, to possess no
literary merit whatever).
The Greeks thought of history as one of the seven arts, inspired by a
goddess, the muse Clio. All of the world’s classic surveys of history can stand as
noble examples of the art of literature, but most historical works and studies
today are not written primarily with literary excellence, though they may
possess it, as it were, by accident.
 Specific mediums and forms of art have changed throughout human history,
but for the most part, art falls into one of the following seven classical forms -
Theater, Painting, Sculpture ,Literature, Architecture, Cinema, Music -Each
different form of art is experienced differently and affects our emotions and
feelings.
Literature is an art form that shares stories. It is an art form of language and
can be read or spoken. Literature is usually defined as writings whose value lies
in the beauty of form or emotional effect. Literature crosses all written
languages and encompasses a wide range of written works, including poetry,
essays, plays, biographies, fiction, non-fiction, satires, and more. Writers show
art with literature through the organization of words that give pleasure, and
while reading is enjoyable, those words are often critiques of society. Many of
the most well-known authors used language and the written word to criticize
or offer a point of view on society like George Orwell and Charles Dickens. Yet
through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere”
pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both
criticizing and affirming cultural values. Literature may be classified according
to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period,
genre, and subject matter.
While literature stands on its own as an art form and is one of the seven
different forms of art, it is also closely related to theater, poetry, film, music,
and the spoken word.
The essay was once written deliberately as a piece of literature: its subject
matter was of comparatively minor importance. Today most essays are written
as expository, informative journalism, although there are still essayists in the
great tradition who think of themselves as artists. Now, as in the past, some of
the greatest essayists are critics of literature, drama, and the arts.
Some personal documents (autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and letters)
rank among the world’s greatest literature. Some examples of this biographical
literature were written for posterity,future generations, in mind, others with no
thought of their being read by anyone but the writer. Some are in a highly
polished literary style; others, couched, written, in a privately evolved
language, win their standing as literature because of their cogency – convincing
argument- insight, depth, and scope.
 Many works of philosophy are classed as literature. The Dialogues of Plato
(4th century BC) are written with great narrative skill and in the finest prose;
the Meditations of the 2nd-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are a
collection of apparently random thoughts. Yet they are classed as literature,
while the speculations of other philosophers, ancient and modern, are not.
Certain scientific works endure, last, as literature long after their scientific
content has become outdated.
To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for
one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.”
The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there
solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as
the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature
elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also
functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming
cultural values. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems,
including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter.
Critical theories
The Greek philosopher and scholar Aristotle is the first great representative
of the constructive school of thought. His Poetics (the surviving fragment of
which is limited to an analysis of tragedy and epic poetry) has sometimes been
dismissed as a recipe book for the writing of potboilers. Certainly, Aristotle is
primarily interested in the theoretical construction of tragedy, as an architect
might analyze the construction of a temple, but he is not exclusively objective.
He does, however, regard the expressive elements in literature as of secondary
importance, and the terms he uses to describe them have been open to
interpretation and a matter of controversy ever since.
Thus, at the beginning of Western literary criticism, the controversy already
exists. Is the artist or writer a technician, like a cook or an engineer, who
designs and constructs a sort of machine that will elicit,draw out, an aesthetic
response from his audience? Or is he a virtuoso who above all else expresses
himself and, because he gives voice to the deepest realities of his own
personality, generates a response from his readers because they admit some
profound identification with him? This antithesis endures throughout western
European history—Scholasticism versus Humanism, Classicism versus
Romanticism—and survives to this day in the common judgment of our
contemporary artists and writers. It is surprising how few critics have declared
that the antithesis is unreal, that a work of literary or plastic art is at once
constructive and expressive, and that it must in fact be both.
Relation of Literature to Life
There is an intimate connection between literature and life. It is, in fact, life
which is the subject matter of literature. Life provides the raw material on
which literature imposes an artistic form. Literature is the communication of
the writer’s experience of life. But this connection between literature and life is
not so simple as it seems. This problem has been discussed by some of the
greatest literary critics of the world, and their conclusions have been
sometimes contradictory.
Plato, the great Greek philosopher, was the first to give a serious thought
to this problem—the relation of literature to life. In his discussions he referred
mainly to poetry, but what he said about poetry can be equally applied to
literature as a whole. He regarded poetry as a mere ‘imitation’ of life, and thus
he condemned the poets. His opposition to poetry was based on his theory of
knowledge. According to him, true reality consists in the ideas of things, of
which individual objects are but reflections or imitations. For example, when
we say a black dog, a good dog, a lame dog etc., we are comparing the dog
which we actually see with the ideal dog, our idea of the dog, which is the true,
unchanging reality, while the dogs which we name as black, good, lame etc. are
mere reflections and imitations of that reality. Thus the poet, who imitates
those objects which are themselves imitations of reality, is obviously producing
something, which is still further removed from ultimate reality. Plato developed
this argument first with reference to the painter. Painting is an imitation of a
specific object or group of objects, and if it is nothing but that, if reality lies not
in apprehending reality, the painter is not doing anything particularly valuable.
Just as the painter only imitates what he sees and does not know how to make
or to use what he sees (he could paint a bed, but not make it), so the poet
imitates reality without necessarily understanding it. Poetry or literature as a
whole is an imitation of imitation and thus twice removed from truth.
There is an obvious error in Plato’s reasoning. Being too much of a
philosopher and moralist, he could not see clearly the relation between
literature and life. He is right when he says that the poet produces something
which is less than reality it means to represent, but he does not perceive that
he also imagines something more than reality. This error was corrected by
Plato’s pupil, Aristotle. In Poetics he undertook to examine the nature and
qualities of imaginative literature with a view to demonstrating that it is true,
and not false as Plato had shown it. He agreed with Plato that poetry is an
imitation of reality, but according to him, this imitation is the objective
representation of life in literature or, in other words, the imaginative
reconstruction of life. Poetry is thus not connected with the outside world in
the simple and direct fashion supposed by Plato. The poet first derives an
inspiration from the world by the power of his imagination; the art of poetry
then imitates this imaginative inspiration in language. The art of poetry or
literature as a whole exists to give shape and substance to a certain kind of
imaginative impulse; the existence of the art implies the existence of the
impulse. Now it is just possible to imagine life exactly as it is; but the exciting
thing is to imagine life as it might be, and it is then that imagination becomes
an impulse capable of inspiring poetry. This is true even in the case of what we
call realism in literature; it is true even when the life imagined was originally an
actuality of some highly exciting nature in itself. Imagination may no more than
concentrate the actuality, by dropping out all its insignificant passages. But that
will be enough to make the resultant poetry, or literature, something different
from the copy of the world which Plato’s condemnation assumed it to be. This
was Aristotle’s reply to Plato. Art or literature is not a slavish imitation of reality
twice removed from truth. The poet is concerned with truth but not the truth
of the analysist, the historian, or the photographer. The poet’s business is not
to write of events that have happened, but of what may happen, of things that
are possible in the light of probability or necessity. For this reason poetry is a
more philosophical, a more serious thing than history. For whilst history deals
with the particular only—this event or that event—poetry deals with the
universal. The poet selects from life according to the principle of poetic truth.
He seeks to draw out what is relevant and representative, and to present it
harmoniously. The truth with which he deals is not that which the anatomist
may lay bare on the dissecting-table, but that which a poet divines and
translates.
Aristotle, thus, met Plato’s charge that poetry is imitation of an imitation by
showing that the poet, by concerning himself with fundamental probabilities
rather with casual actualities, reaches more deeply into reality than the
annalist or historian. Sir Philip Sidney, who next took up the question of the
relation of literature to life also refuted Plato’s contention that literature is a
mere imitation of an imitation. According to him, the poet does not imitate, but
imagines; it is the reader who imitates what the poet writes. Taking his material
from the actual world, the poet describes an ideal world by means of his
imagination. For Sidney the ideal world of the poet is of value because it is a
better world than the real world and it is presented in such a way that the
reader is stimulated to try and imitate it in his own practice.
The problem of literature’s relation to life was next taken up by Dryden
who pointed out that imaginative literature gives us a ‘just and lively’ image of
human nature by representing its ‘passions and humours’. This point was
further developed by Dr. Johnson who expressed the view that the poet ‘holds
up a mirror to nature”. According to him, “Nothing can please many, and
please long, but just representation of general nature.” The way to please the
greatest number over the longest period of time, which is the duty of
imaginative literature, is to provide accurate pictures of nature. Explaining his
view that the poet is the illuminator of human nature Dr. Johnson wrote:
“The business of the poet is to examine, not the individual, but the species…
He must exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features
and must neglect the minute discriminations, which one may have remarked
and another have neglected.’’
According to Dr. Johnson, the poet must know the manners and customs
of men of all times and conditions, not because it is his duty to make vivid to
the reader the different ways in which men have lived and behaved, but so that
he is not taken in by surface differences and is able to penetrate to the
common humanity underlying there.
Plato's three main objections to poetry are that poetry is not ethical,
philosophical and pragmatic, in other words, he objected to poetry from the
point of view of education, from philosophical point of view and from moral
point of view. ... The reader of poetry is seduced