Literature and its constituent parts

 Literature (Definition by The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms): In present times generally taken to be imaginative compositions, mainly printed but earlier  (and still, in some cultures) was oral, whether dramatic, metrical or prose in form. This is a relatively recent usage, having general acceptance in the European languages only from the nineteenth century. Earlier senses have been less restricted: for example, the body of writings in a language, artistic or not; and particularly, the study of such a corpus of written materials. For an account of the history of the term, see Rene Wellek, ‘The name and nature of comparative literature’ in Discriminations (1970), especially pp. 3–13. No ‘discovery procedure’ is needed for literature. Borderline cases are easier to resolve than at first appears, and their manner of resolution is instructive. William McGonagall may be a bad poet, but he is clearly a poet: there is craftsmanship, a sense of tradition, even if both qualities are precariously fulfilled in his work. (We can say he is a poor artist, but that is not the same as asserting that he is not an artist: EVALUATION is quite independent of identification as literature.) But the telephone book, though highly structured, fails to be literature because it is ‘real’ – a list of people, addresses, numerical codes for calling these actual people. Contrast Scott Fitzgerald’s list of Gatsby’s visitors in The Great Gatsby (1925), a parodic manipulation in art of a form from everyday life. So  the criteria seem to be of different kinds, some formal and some existential; but they apply fairly clearly in individual cases. We may seek the characteristics of literature from many points of view, some intrinsic and some extrinsic. Extrinsically, we will certainly want to regard it as a definite cultural institution, an interrelated set of SEMIOTIC systems. We can note the values a society assigns to its literature: these vary from society to society and from age to age, ranging from seriousness and ritual, to frivolity and verbal play (and different GENRES have different expectations). Literature has commonly been distinguished from linguistic ephemera, effort being expended to preserve it in script or oral tradition; it has been regarded as a potent tool in the transmission and preservation of cultural values; it has also often been associated with an elite, either conservative or revolutionary, or with an influential and selfesteeming bourgeoisie. Cultural attitudes towards literature, such as these are empirical: they may be derived from anthropological and sociological observations.

A different series of extrinsic criteria involves speculation about the relationship between literature and individuals, society or culture. In relation to authors, works have been claimed to be either expressive, gestures from the  writer’s personal character and perceptions (Longinus, Wordsworth) or, contrariwise, impersonal, creations which efface their creators as individuals (Yeats, Eliot, NEW CRITICS). In relation to the reader, literature has been supposed to have many different functions and effects. Theorists who assume impersonality in respect to origin generally assume stasis in respect to effect: if the audience is ‘moved’ by the aesthetic experience, it is not moved to action (so propaganda, PORNOGRAPHY, etc. have not been considered art because

they are kinetic). On the quality of stasis, the aesthetician would generally concur with the law courts: that which pumps our adrenalin is not art (cf. AUTHOR, READER, ART). More specific theories of literary EFFECT have been proposed: the various sophistications of a concept of PLEASURE, or I. A. Richards’s belief that literature causes stability, harmonization of impulses, in a successful reader (Principles of Literary Criticism, 1924), or the doctrine of CATHARSIS, the essentially harmless release of emotions. Such theories proliferated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: pressed to the extreme, the lead to a belief that literature can cleanse and save society (Arnold, Leavis) – but here the theory undermined itself, since on that interpretation literature hardly differs from propaganda or sermons. If literature is a form of persuasion (as the RHETORICAL tradition claims) there must be supplementary criteria specifying exactly what kind of persuasion it is – for example, persuasion to adopt a certain ‘world-view’ but not persuasion literally to fight to change the world. Fictionality is one such criterion (see

FICTION, IMITATION). Evidently literature ‘imitates’, ‘depicts’, ‘represents’, ‘presents’, ‘embodies’ people, objects, societies, ideas: Mr Micawber, Middlemarch, Howards End, Camus’s plague. Literature is not alone in this respect – the telephone book, an inventory of the contents of a house, the service manual for a car, are also representational. But if someone’s neighbours listed in the directory enjoy spatio-temporal existence, Mr Micawber does not; thus the concept of imitation is different for David Copperfield and for the telephone directory. Fiction is creative: its creations are felt to be real, but are actually abstract and therefore cannot be said so easily to impinge on one’s worldly experience. Literature is irresponsible in the sense of amoral. Compare Archibald Macleish’s dictum that a poem must be ‘equal to: not true’ (Ars Poetica). Considerations of truth and reality are not relevant to literature; but my car handbook must be true, since it is designed to guide actions. On the basis of such observations, literature is traditionally distinguished from science, history, philosophy, etc. Literature is at the same time like the other arts (in terms of FORM or STRUCTURE) and unlike them (in terms of LANGUAGE). Now we appeal to intrinsic criteria, and ‘poem’ creeps in as the general term, inviting us to substitute a focus on the individual literary construct for the ‘extrinsic’ focus on literature as a cultural institution or as an influence on the psyche. ‘Poem’ retains its etymological connotations (Greek poesis, ‘making’) and evokes the literary work as a ‘made thing’, an artefact, a single, unique, construct; a hard enduring object (and not a pale reflection of something else). As soon as we have achieved a definite conception of the poem as a single, coherent, aesthetic object, we are instantly involved in ontological speculations: what mode of being does a literary work enjoy? Is it, in fact, an independent entity, or is it located in, for example, the writer’s or reader’s consciousness? (see EFFECT, INTENTION, LANGUAGE). If it has a mode of separate being, what are its ‘internal’ characteristics? Various styles of criteria have found fashion in attempts at the intrinsic definition of literature or of particular kinds of literature. The CHICAGO CRITICS avoided an overall definition, but erected a scheme of ‘parts’, abstract structural components (CHARACTER, DICTION, PLOT, etc.); a particular selection from this set of components, in an appropriate order of importance, serving to define the nature of each GENRE. Thus the complete field of literature is, allegedly, mapped out by a set of characterizations of the genres. The intrinsic quality (if it exists) remains undefined. A quite different approach, though dependent on equally abstract notions, results from assuming that any literary work is literary by virtue of possessing certain qualities which are common to the arts as a whole (cf. AESTHETICS, and the recommended reading below): ‘balance’, ‘composition’, ‘structure’ and so on. However, a definition of literature derived from general aesthetics would certainly have to be augmented by criteria which make reference to the linguistic medium. The search for intrinsic linguistic criteria intensified in Russian, Czech and French Formalism and Structuralism, with writers, such as Jakobson, Mukaìovskò, Todorov and Culler making illuminating claims. The ideas are dealt with in the articles on FORMALISM, STRUCTURALISM, and particularly POETICS, which also list major titles for further reading. The majority of contemporary critics are of the opinion that literature as such cannot be adequately defined, though its previous definitions can be analysed in terms of their cultural and ideological assumptions. ‘Literature’ thus appears more as a descriptive term that refers to texts which are deemed to have certain intrinsic family resemblances that enable them to be discussed for extrinsic purposes under the heading, though ‘fictionality’ is not a reliable measure with which to decide whether a text will institutionally or more generally be considered to be ‘literature’. For the older traditions, see M. C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (1958); M. Bradbury and D. J. Palmer (eds), Contemporary Criticism (1970); E. Vivas and M. Krieger (eds), The Problems of Aesthetics (1953); M. Weitz (ed.), Problems in Aesthetics (2nd edn, 1970); R. Wellek and A. Warren, Theory of Literature (3rd edn, 1963); W. K.Wimsatt, Jr and C. Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957); Peter Widdowson, Literature (1998).