I always considered myself to have a broad sense of the word literature. I’ve always been of the opinion that anything that is written down and tells a story is literature. Whether it be Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy or a children’s picture book with only a few sentences. But others I’ve talked to say my definition is too wide. That only serious reading should be considered literature. For the record, dictionary.com totally agrees with me, but I’m still open to hearing other people’s definitions.
literature [lit-er-uh-cher, -choor, li-truh-]
–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.
7. Archaic. polite learning; literary culture; appreciation of letters and books.
In college, I took a multi-ethnic literature class, and in a discussion session, we got into a debate over what literature was. Some people shared my definition, while others shared the narrower definition, but the TA insisted that any kind of storytelling was literature. We were discussing Native American dancing at the time, and she insisted that it was literature. I tried to argue that she was using literature as a type of umbrella word that all kinds of storytelling fell under, and that instead, storytelling should be the umbrella word with literature, music, dancing, etc. falling underneath. But she accused me of being racist. “So only old white men write literature?” she said (she was white BTW). Um, no, that’s not what I said, but whatever you say, crazy lady. At times like those you just need to bite the bullet and be quiet. At the end of the class she proclaimed, “So we agree, Native American dancing is literature.” Whatever.
Anyway, what do you consider literature to be?
You should have said, “So are you saying that Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, May Sarton, Isabel Allende, etc., are old white men?” Stupid ideologues and their stupid straw man arguments.
I tend toward your view. Some literature, of course, is more edifying than others.
I agree with you, literature is the umbrella term used for the written form of story telling. I think those who try to limit the scope of the word are attempting to use it as qualitative measure, and then you get into the whole debate over how you quantify ‘quality.’
Oh, and your TA was a douchebag.
No, dancing is not literature. What a whack job.
My definition is probably fairly snobby. Literature is serious work, children’s stories less-so. Why? What’s up with that? Is erotica literature? If not then what it is it? Arrgghh!!! I guess I grew up equating literature with boring. Totally not fair but we get stuff in our brain and it sticks. If someone says they have a degree in English literature (waves to Enrico and Josh) I don’t assume they have been studying Laurel K. Hamilton or Steven King. Why? Not sure but I’m pretty sure they aren’t. Because those are entertaining easy reads (I beg to different on entertaining for LKH but that’s another story) and people look down on those. If you enjoy reading something, if it doesn’t make you think about your life and address serious issues then somehow it’s trash and less worthy. Sigh.
Why do you think MANY women (and some men) deny they read romance novels? Because people think those are for stupid housewives who don’t have the brain power to process a serious book. I do it myself. When at my first staff meeting the question went around what is your favourite book you read this summer, I lied. Because I didn’t want to have to justify my answer or possibly face “the look” which says “WTF are you reading THAT trash for?”
So in theory I agree, all written word is literature, but I don’t consider that I read literature, I read great (hopefully most of the time) stories that entertain me and make my life a little bit more pleasant.
Native American dancing is as much literature as stripper dancing is. Do her stretch marks not tell the story of a struggling single mother of a child who may or may not know who his real father is, does the scar on her shoulder not tell the story of a life of abuse, or crime, do her glassy soulless eyes not tell the heartbreak of drug abuse.
With such a broad definition of literature, every lapdance is like reading Moby Dick and every visit to the “Champagne Room” should win a Pulitzer Prize!
Since the root of the word literature is the Latin word for “letter” (as in the symbols of a written language), no, dancing is not literature. Storytelling, certainly, but not literature. If that were the case than you’d have to be able to transpose the sentence “dancing is literature” to “literature is dancing,” which albeit poetic, is definitively wrong and just plain silly. Her response to you is typical postmodern bullshit, which has no basis in reality. (don’t get me started on the ludicrous underpinnings of postmodernism…)
But to answer your question: Yes, literature is broad, not narrow. Because, really, who determines that narrow view? Is the horribly-written Frankenstein by Mary Shelley fit in this narrow view? Most in that camp would say yes, yet she’s an awful writer (good story-teller though), so how would that fit in with their definition? Hemingway wasn’t considered in this narrow view when he was in his heyday — he wrote decidedly pop novels for the time — but now he’s considered “literature.” When did that occur and why didn’t it occur immediately when his books were published? These are answers that anyone that has that narrow definition of literature would be hard-pressed to come up with.
Paul: Hey, strippers can tell a story! Just give me a pen and paper while I dance…
Craig: That A4A tweet is freaking hilarious, btw!
If Literature really means “acquaintance with letters” as Wikipedia says, yes I looked up their definition, Shut Up! But if that is true, then if you are reading this, it is literature! Yay Me.
I think it is really more subjective. One man’s Filet Mignon is another man’s Butchered Dead Steer.
As for dance, calling it literature is like calling oral tradition literature. I agree it’s a form of storytelling.
I like to think that all books are literature. This way I am not just a stay at home mom, I am reading literature all day long. The Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?, and 10 Little Toddlers are some of my favorite works of literature (or should I say they are the literature I read the most?)
Paul: Is “reading Moby Dick” a euphemism? I couldn’t find it at urbandictionary.net…
Is a (well-written) mathematics book “literature”? Euclid’s Elements has appeared in over 1000 different editions/translations since the invention of the printing press (reportedly second only to The Bible in this regard), and transformed the teaching of mathematics for over two millenia. Is it “literature” too?
Or does “literature” imply fiction?
My had this discussion in prox 5,391 of my English classes. I forgot how I feel now!
Literature is the nerdy obscure no longer relevant stuff I’VE read that you have NOT READ which renders me awesomer.
Right?
No? Hmm.
Also: literature is what I majored in. For about ten thousand years.
TwoPi, your question of whether literature implies fiction makes me think of the “fiction” bookshelves in the house that also contain select non-fiction works that are good enough to be promoted to “fiction” status [according to my own personal filing system]. Other non-fiction has to go in less-convenient bookshelves in darker corners of the house.
I associate the word “literature” with only writing, but beyond that thinking about it makes my brain hurt. I think it depends on context — if asked, I think of science fiction as one kind of literature but I’ve never used the phrase “science fiction literature”.
Craig: We should do a different word every Thursday. Next week can we do “esoteric”?
My definition of literature is probably like the famous definition of pornography/obscenity from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it.” The guide to setting up my cable box is not literature despite being written and telling something of a story. I might be convinced that Swan Lake is literature (or, at least, could be analyzed and understood in the exact same ways we analyze and understand literature) despite being a story told through dance and music.
The Native American story dance … I don’t know. I’ve not seen it. But I suspect that if we can call the Iliad and Swan Lake and Citizen Cane “literature” then we can probably make room for the Native American dancing if it reminds us of enough of the other things we think of as defining literature (typically: a sort of formalized structure that creates permanence across audiences, storytelling, a notion of being premeditatively shaped or crafted by an artist, having a written component or the ability to later capture the story and artistry through a written component, etc.)
I refuse to believe Swan Lake is literature. I know that in this very post I said that I was open to hearing other people’s definitions, but I can’t give up the fact that something must be written down for it to be considered literature.
(Yes, music is written down, but it must be heard, not read, to be truly appreciated)
What if you know what each note sounds like? As you READ the notes, you can see genius and stuff. Like “OMG! The followed an F note with a A note, then with two B notes in a row?? So co0o0o0ol.”
That’s reading…. reading music.
Jere: Swan Lake is similar to several stories in literature, but that doesn’t make the ballet literature. Gone With The Wind (the book) is literature, Gone With The Wind (the movie) isn’t.
i was gonna say sumfing similar to enrico! I’ve gone over this question SO MANY EFFING timez in my college courses that my brain literally refuses to function when i try and think about it.
The only question for frustrating for me is “what is poetry? Doesn’t it have to rhyme?” and i only have convos wiff people on it who have honestly no clue about the histroy, past AND present of poetry but of course still think that their lack of eduction means little as long as they have a loud voice and abrasive opinion.
As much as i love literature and reading and discussing books, as a whole it is sumfing i hate talking about cuz most people only want to argue and try and name as many obscure writers as possible to validate some artarded opinion about nuffin’.
Enrico: Musical notation is only an instruction to the performer (without most of the necessary nuance that the performer then gives it). If that were to be considered literature, then you could argue that Ikea assembly instructions are also literature. Talk about your “slippery slopes”.
Josh: Wow! That’s exactly how I feel about poetry! Makes no sense to me at all.
Mel (and Craig): but if you follow that argument, the script for Hamlet is merely instructions to a performer and without the nuance provided by an actor, you aren’t getting the full experience. Are you prepared to say that the works of Shakespeare are not literature because they were intended for live performance (not reading) and the associated writing is nothing but instructions to the artist who will actually give it life?
misunderstanding about english majors #627: we have read all of shakespeare’s werks and constantly want to have deep convoz about him!
::FART:: shakespeare is snore city u.s.a.!
Sorry, Josh, I was a theatre arts major with an English minor in dramatic literature, so I have read all of Shakespeare’s works and would enjoy having deep conversations about them all the time.
::hates Shakespeare::
But then again I was a geology major.
Jere: You’ve “read” all of Shakespeare’s works?
I’ll go away now, cause I gotta light a fire under my trailer cause we’re expectin’ a powerfull cold spell tonite and I don’t want my plastic pipes to freeze.
Josh — did I actually see you use the words “history” and “past” in a sentence in a way that does not involve you disparaging them? If so, *HUGS* and big happy grins!!!!!
I have to agree with the “has to have been written down” part, and yes, pretty much, has to be fiction. And, being a pedant and a language nerd and a classicist, I am particularly thrilled that the stripper in the conversation adduced the Latin root of the word. The Iliad and the Odyssey only became literature when they were written down: prior to that they were oral poetry: a valid storytelling genre in its own right, but not literature per se. The Aeneid was literature from day one. This isn’t JUST a matter of definition: literature is self-referential and aware of its antecedents in a way that is different from how oral, musical, dance, and other media are.
Beyond that, it is hard to define why Romance Novels aren’t literature. The example of Hemingway is extremely apt. Many people now living will never consider Tolkien literature.
(And, not to start up the tired old debates about hooking up and romance that have happned on this blog in the past, but, does anybody actually use Manhunt and Adam4Adam to … um … actually look for a BOYFRIEND?)
As a poli-sci major, I’ve enjoyed Shakesspeare. Some of Shakespeare anyway. And to me, poetry doesn’t have to rhyme…but it should.
Course, I’m not really a fan of Shakespeare OR poetry, so what do I know? Gimme a good old fashioned DC Comic, with Superman flying through outer space or the JLA trouncing the Injustice League, and I’m a happy lil Polt.
And no, comic books are not literature either. To me, and as I say this, I’m already dodging the incoming barbs, both verbal and physical, but literature is boring old books written mostly long ago, but sometimes recently, that are ponderous, self important and of no interest to me.
Therefore, if I like a book, it’s automatically NOT literature.
HUGS…
Polt — ugh. DC?!?! I’m all about the Superman (what gay man DOESN’T love the idea of a perfectly sweet, honest, kind, and giving invulnerable strong man who will “save me”), but honestly. Marvel all the way!!!!
And Jere, I think plays are the edge-condition — Swan Lake is *definitely* not literature. Hamlet is.
jere: You’ve read EVERY SINGLE THING that w. Shakespeare ever wrote EVER?! Even every single obscured or undiscovered piece that undoubtedly will be uncovered some time in the future??? I don’t even think my college profz have done that. Good trabajo!!!!
Polt: please…please…please…if a battle of rhyming vs. Non-rhyming begins, my head will explode and my marmalade brainz will spew over everyone.
Justin: and literary history is fun! It’s that boring political history crap that putz me into a bleached white coma!
I agree with you that Literature must be written. I think easy reading pop novels are a kind of light literature, where more profound works may be considered serious literature. Context can also color the connotation implied by the utterer of the word.
Dance is not literature. However I think the TA meant to imply that story telling through dance was the historic Native American equivalent of our literature. She just expressed herself ineloquently.
Some academics (and politicians) are more interested in the thrill of debate and waging, real or imagined, wars of ideas and perceptions than actually communicating effectively.
I also think that there are aspects of the modern American education system that lend itself to the distillation of rich and complex subjects into dumbed down bullet points and over-simplifications.
“The only question more* frustrating for me is “what is poetry? Doesn’t it have to rhyme?” and i only have convos wiff people on it who have honestly no clue about the histroy, past AND present of poetry but of course still think that their lack of eduction means little as long as they have a loud voice and abrasive opinion.”
THANK YOU!!!! If one more person calls my poetry “a short story with line breaks” I might explode!
Dr. Seuss was genius but I can live without rhyming.
Chris: I like how you broke literature down. Maybe that is the key, there are different categories of literature. All have value if at least one reader gets enjoyment from the consumption of that particular written work.
Oh and Dave S — not to “get you started” on “the ludicrous underpinnings of postmodernism” — but I’m with you on that, too. The underpinnings, actually, aren’t so bad. Foucault for instance wasn’t as bad as his followers have been. The main problem in my mind with postmodernism is that it’s incoherent: everything is socially constructed, but everything to do with western europe and old white dead european males is bad because europeans oppressed women and indigenous people of color. But if everything is socially-constructed, including the idea that oppressing people is morally wrong (an idea that comes straight out of the enlightenment thankyouverymuch), then, um, wait, infinite regression, *marmalade brainz explode*
Morality is socially-constructed, just like every other aspect of our society. Althusser told me.
Josh: I’ve read everything in the generally accepted canon and a few things that are not. Seen about 16 plays performed live, another 10 or so on film, and acted in 3. I’m not sure why you had to twist my fairly innocent comment into a claim of ridiculous hyperbole. Is this Joshrico is mean to Jere week or something?
Right, so if morality is socially-constructed, then there is no principled reason to diss western european culture and elevate indigenous or non-white culture because western europeans kept slaves and raped the environment and all those other bad things, because they’re only bad in somebody’s socially-constructed mind, and not “really” bad, because there’s no such thing, right?
And btw, as for rhyming, rhyme is a relatively recent creation. The vast majority of all poetries in all cultures did not rhyme. The Greeks and the Romans never did. The Mahabharata and Ramayana and the Vedas aren’t rhymed. Japanese poetry isn’t rhymed. I’m something of a history-of-western-poetry-and-versification buff actually.
(Oh, and Josh, not all non-literary history is “political” and “boring”. It’s kind of impossible to separate literary history from cultural and social — and yes, political — history: they are all intertwined.)
Justin: As terrible as it sounds, right.
And Joshrico wishes everyone knew about rhyming! For some reason lots of people think poetry needs to rhyme! So annoying.
TwoPi: Perhaps literature is written narratives. That would exclude technical works of writing.
Saying folk dance is literature is like saying E. E. Cummings wrote sonnets.
Jere — that’s actually pretty impressive! That gives me hope that you can somehow dodge the soulectomy that typically takes place in L3 (sadly, neither my cousin nor my former college roommate — who was a drama major — escaped the procedure
).
Enrico — mine was a straw-man argument: I actually don’t believe that morality is socially-constructed — I think people have pretty much always known right from wrong (modulo some edge conditions here and there) but at the same time I don’t believe that western civilization is somehow “worse” than other cultures despite the list of things I mentioned. At least western civilization is aware of many of the flaws and shortcomings in its own past (and present)
Justin: I know you weren’t saying you agree. lol. And it sounds weird and mean I guess if you do believe it. I don’t personally condone slavery/murder/etc., but I do understand that the reason I feel like it’s wrong is because I was raised to think that. Well, that’s what I think anyway.
While I don’t think that values can be logically proven to be right, I also don’t think that they are just the result of our upbringing. We have the power to take control of our values, changing them when we decide that they are wrong.
Ryan – I agree but I’d go a little further than that. Yes, absolutely, cultural norms differ from culture to culture and from era to era. But even though it sounds a bit naive, I still think that people, deep down, have a sense of right and wrong that is cross-cultural. (That is NOT the same as saying that all people are “naturally good deep down” — we’re all a bit of good and a bit of bad, in various measures.)
Why do I think something so idealistic? Well, because I see little clues buried here and there throughout history. Why, for instance, did Aristotle feel he had to go to great lengths to come up with complex philosophical arguments for why slavery was justified? He lived in a society where slavery wasn’t questioned. Why did he feel he had to come up with lengthy philosophical arguments that women were inferior? He lived in a society where nobody thought for a moment that women should have the same political rights as men.
It seems to me that the louder people try to justify something, the more likely it is that deep down they know it’s wrong.
It helps if you boil down morality to the golden rule — everybody wants to be treated decently. People may have told themselves that slaves or women weren’t really people in the same way they were, but I think they knew better. In fact frankly I tend to suspect that the more brutally people treated women and slaves and people of other cultures or races they told themselves were “inferior”, the more they knew that what they were doing was wrong.
Your TA was/is a twit. I enjoy Shakespeare and poetry (rhyming or not).
I suppose I’ve always thought of literature as the classics. But I like Chris D.’s take on the subject.
Tam – so what is your favorite book? And what answer did you give?
Ryan: What if the values one has been raised with dictate that one ought never question those values, lest they suffer some eternal penalty. The concept of, “faith”, in religion is often used to support tenets than cannot be supported by evidence.
I think that most people do have the power to change their values, but heavily indoctrinated people may be less able to make those changes.
Chris D.: While our upbringing can affect how easy it is for us to examine and change our values, I still think everyone has some capability to do it. Even people in the most oppressive, cultish environments sometimes break out on their own.
Justin: The Golden Rule does seem ubiquitous.
I love the way that Craig can be off watching Desperate Housewives while his blog just takes on a life of its own, moving from the definition of literature to a course in Ethics.
Of course these blog comment threads usually DO wander off on their own, but usually in a more filthy direction
Whoa, big debate on Puntabulous and not a body part is discussed! It’s all high brow today.
I’m not a writer and didn’t study literature, but I have read quite a few of Shakespeare’s works. Literature to me means the written word. Native American Dancing is a form of storytelling. Neither one is more or less than the other. Your TA was very inarticulate and appears to have had their own agenda.
Now, if you want to have a discussion about what is art, that I might be a conversation to which I can contribute.
I have a feeling that the TA had internalized the idea that literature is good and storytelling is not valuable. When she encountered something she considered valuable, she labeled it literature rather than reevaluated her perceptions of storytelling.
Ryan: I think that’s exactly it! She wanted us to know that Native American dancing was valuable and that was the only way she thought she could do it.