What is your view on literature?

Write here what you think of literature

I'll start.

First of all, yeah, I will talk about the 3 types of literature we can find: literature, paraliterature and non-literature.

The easiest to define is non-literature. I think everyone will agree with me here. Non-literature is everything that isnt linked to literature (duuh!). It consists in dictionnaries, encyclopedias, books of references, Where is Charlie?'s books and everything close to that.

Then, we have paraliterature, where everyone diagrees with me and throw rocks at me :/ Paraliterature is kinda easy to find and is very popular today. It is popular literature that circles canon literature. Canon here means what has been adopted by posterity. Paraliterature is in sort playing with canons, trying to make their own. I know I'm unclear, so heres basic criterias:

-It is a highly consumed literature (will talk about that further)
-It is popular, made for everyone, accessible
-It's industrial, a lot is producted
-It is only for entertainment

Here, I do agree with what I said, though some points will be clarified later. Now, where I disagree about the notion of paraliterature is when we talk about which genres are classified paraliterature. If I remember correctly, science-fiction, adventure, fantasy, kids stories, tales, whodunit, police stories, everything like those are considered paraliterature. This is something I disagree with. Many great authors were writing about those genres too. Just mentionning a few names here: Perrault, Voltaire, Japrisot, Poe, etc, they've done what I consider literature. But let me tell you this: J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer are writing paraliterature. No one here will ever convince me that Harry Potter reveals true literary talent under its magic stick of whatever. It alienates you and doesnt make you smarter or give you a whole new point of view about life.

Literature, as for itself, is true written beauty We can see it formally and subjectivly (dunno how to spell that word and I dont care ) Formally, we can see it is literature because of the level of stylistic figures the author used and how melodic the words are. When you pay attention, it should be like a music in your head. Also, true literature texts are dependant of the society. It reflects its customs and values of the country. There are 2 criterias to define real literature:

-Linked to a certain reality
-Language property

So, I said earlier that paraliterature is highly consumed. It is a true fact...although it may also happen that real literature will be consumed. Quick example: I hope that most of you guys have heard of The Name Of The Rose written by Umberto Eco. This book is a literary book and, surprise, it was also a world phenomenon. Sometimes, things like that happen, though being very very rare

Now, the big question: what is literature? Seriously, I do not know. It'll take more than 5 books of 1000 pages to define literature. For me, literature transmits a certain kind of knowledge in a specific manner: through letters and words. It allows everyone to express itself in a unique way. It uses language in its own singulary way.


Thats it for now. If you guys bring other points, ill gladly join in and comment them

Please comment! ;P i dont want this thread to die with my single post :/ You may not know as much as other people, but I consider every adding important After all, the true meaning of literature lies inside our heart

I disagree with even that style of classification of written works, as it seems to me to be far too limited in its descriptive power. I would classify written works (if I were an English professor) by identifying what groups a particular work belonged in ("tags", by another name. If I really wanted to overkill the idea, I'd use fuzzy sets to defined degrees of membership in the groups; it would prove useful for extracting data, but it would also might be too subjective to be very useful). For example a encyclopedia about medieval British archery by Sir Robert Stonehill would belong in the groups "Factual", "British", "Medieval", and “Archery”, along with many other groups (such as “Encyclopedia”, “Books by Sir Robert Stonehill”, and so on). These groups could be just about anything, including groups indicating that a work focused more on prose than story, or groups of works that all contained the same rhythm (like Iambic Pentameter). The groups themselves are pretty arbitrary (and in fact may be defined in terms of other groups), and will depend on what bit of data you are trying to extract or emphasis.


Let's take a look at your definitions of both “paraliterature” and proper “literature”; I have much to say about them.
Also, please do not think I am talking about you when I mention “elitists” or “hipsters” or am otherwise derogatory towards these definitions.

Krisexy26 wrote:

Paraliterature:
-It is a highly consumed literature
-It is popular, made for everyone, accessible
-It's industrial, a lot is produced
-It is only for entertainment

The first three criteria of “paraliterature” are big warning signs about elitism to me. They imply that proper “literature” is not usually highly popular with “the masses”, and that not a lot of it is written. Elsewhere, “proper literature” is additionally defined as “something having artistic merit”. This, to be frank, is bullshit, and smacks of hipster/academic elitism of the worst kind. My reasoning is thus: if artistic merit is totally subjective, then the measure of which of two works is better depends on the person or persons comparing them, in which case it is pretty easy to argue that artistic merit is meaningless (because it becomes a “nuh uh, stuff I like is better!” contest). But if artistic merit is even partially an objective property, then the number of people who like it does not matter (by the definition of objectivity). So either the concept of artistic merit is meaningless, or the first three defining properties of paraliterature simply do not matter.
The last criteria is extremely vague, and potentially includes “literature” as well. It is vague, in that if you interpret it strictly, then any written work that attempted to pass on any knowledge or idea at all would not qualify as para-literature, since it wouldn't be strictly for entertainment purposes. It potentially includes “literature” as well, because most definitions of “literature” mention melodic reading and stylistic prose, which are entertaining to read.

Krisexy26 wrote:

[The Harry Potter and Twilight series] alienate you and doesn't make you smarter or give you a whole new point of view about life.

Here I have to disagree with you on a logical basis; specifically, your statement's validity is subjective. I've never read the books in question, but it is entirely possible for a new reader to read the Harry Potter books and be given a whole new point of view on life, if they had never considered that point of view before. For example, the concept that one should not abuse one's powers, magical or otherwise; the concept that “might does not equal right”. Not a particularly “epic” point of view, but a young child may not have seen that point of view laid out before.

Krisexy26 wrote:

Now, the big question: what is literature? Seriously, I do not know. It'll take more than 5 books of 1000 pages to define literature.

I have yet to see anyone be able to clearly define proper “literature” vs “paraliterature”, which is another big red flag to me. It is especially alarming that they don't even try to define “literature” as “all non-literature that isn't paraliterature”, apparently because “paraliterature” is also so vaguely defined that it tends to cover everything, meaning that the set “literature” would contain nothing. Again I sense that elitism and snobbery are behind this; “they” (not you Krisexy26) just want to have the ability to look down their noses at some work they don't like and declare that the work is “just paraliterature”, and because things are so ill-defined it is impossible to challenge their proclamations based on facts.

Krisexy26 wrote:

Literature, as for itself, is true written beauty We can see it formally and subjectivly. Formally, we can see it is literature because of the level of stylistic figures the author used and how melodic the words are. When you pay attention, it should be like a music in your head. Also, true literature texts are dependant of the society. It reflects its customs and values of the country. There are 2 criterias to define real literature:

-Linked to a certain reality
-Language property

Neither of these definitions is particularly clear nor helpful. What is this “certain reality”? Fictional stories can be quite realistic, either in describing things that don't exist but could under our laws of physics, or in describing a world that is fake, yet follows all our physical laws and doesn't have anything our world doesn't. The definition about the “Language property” is not very helpful either, as it is matched by so many things. A rhythmic poem is “ like a music in your head”, “ dependant of the society”, “ reflects its customs and values of the country”, and often contains many “stylistic figures”. The same can be said for many things; play scripts, movie scripts, lyrics, even many books, like the Lord Of The Rings. Perhaps if you explain these things a little more, it will make more sense to me.


To summarize, I am not very impressed with the definitions of “paraliterature” and “proper literature”, and seems to me that the distinction arises from a certain group of elitists (not you Krisexy26) not wanting to admit that their particular and favorite form of writing is really just another genre, and not a particularly popular one with the masses at that. To counter that they try to dismiss everything else as “paraliterature” and back their argument up with flaky, poorly defined arguments.


TL;DR version: I think the difference between “paraliterature” and proper “literature” is a meaningless one created for bad reasons.


(To any who reads this: please contact myself or another moderator or an administrator if you feel that I have overstepped my bounds, been too harsh, or have otherwise acted improperly. I'm not usually quite this mean, but I really dislike hipsterism, elitism, snobbery, and the tendency of the “liberal arts” to have vaguely defined subjective classifications that don't allow the drawing of conclusions, and "literature" vs. "paraliterature" is all of the above. Hopefully I come across as bashing the concepts of "paraliterature" and "proper literature", rather than it appearing that I am bashing Krisexy26.)

Well I agree here, in the sense that making the difference between the two is entirely subject to many many things : personal tastes, personal experiences ( what have you read before ), culture and so on..

Let's take for example a book like "Song of fire and ice" by R.R. Martins . According to those criterias it could be labelled as para-literature, appealing to the masses, and yet it's a very well written book that can effectively shed a new light on life and the concept of good and evil for example.

Like Oldman pointed, I think the distinction is way way too subjective here ^^;
I think it would be more fair to use the distinction : literature and classic literature instead.

Also moving the thread as it is not Felarya related

I'll start by saying that any definition of literature is necessarily subjective. There is no objective definition external to our own personal (or collective) views.

In a way, it's a bit like discussing morality. Any discussion on what's right or wrong can only be a discussion on what individuals or "society" consider right or wrong; there is no objective morality external to human constructs of the notion. Same with the notion of literature. We can only discuss what we personally view as literature, or what we believe society's nebulous definition to be.

Having said that, I would probably situate myself somewhere between the two of you (Kris and Oldman).

First, I do think that not all written works are of equal value. (I'll focus here on works of fiction, because otherwise it will get horrendously complicated. Though yes, I am aware that Churchill got the Nobel Prize for Literature for a work of non-fiction.) I imagine most people would agree on that.

To me, a work deserves particular recognition if

* it is creative, contributing something new and imaginative (be it in terms of theme, narrative voice, narrative structure or "simply" plot), rather than just slavishly following the conventions of a genre to meet the comfortable expectations of mass readership (This criterion would apply equally to cinema, by the way)

* and/or it is thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating, enriching the mind with new ideas, new challenges to prior views, new ways of looking at the world

* and/or it is moving - by which I mean moving in a deep, meaningful way, rather than cheap, easy sentimentality.

I don't mean by this that other works have no value. There is a place for essentially uncreative, conventional works, as a form of comfortable entertainment. Their role is, for the most part, a positive one. But works which meet at least one of the above criteria are, to me, qualitatively different.

Nor does it mean that "popular fiction" never meets those criteria. I disagree with you, Kris, on Arthur C. Clarke (whom you mentioned elsewhere), for instance. Clarke, according to me, meets at least the first criterion - and, in some of his works, I would argue he meets the second.

Krisexy26 wrote:

Literature, as for itself, is true written beauty We can see it formally and subjectivly (dunno how to spell that word and I dont care ) Formally, we can see it is literature because of the level of stylistic figures the author used and how melodic the words are. When you pay attention, it should be like a music in your head.

That is one criterion which defines a notable work, but it is not necessary for this one to be present if other criteria are met.

For instance, I wouldn't describe Victor Hugo's style as "beautiful" or "musical". His works do, however, meet other crucial criteria - thought-provoking, meaningfully moving, and thematically outstanding. (Hugo is, for instance, far more successful at genuinely moving scenes (within a meaningful social context) than, for example, Dickens. Which is one reason why I consider Hugo to be a better writer - though Dickens deserves full credit for raising important issues in the national consciousness of his time, and arguably beyond.)

Conversely, take the works of Joseph Conrad. I admire his writing because I really like his style. His imagery is excellent; he has an uncommon way with words. His narrative style jumps out at you, rather than blending smoothly into the text, but somehow it works. (At least, it does for me; I know some people find him irritating.) His works qualify, to me, as being of special value almost purely because of his style, rather than for any intellectual or significant emotional merit.

In other words, a work of literature may be praiseworthy for meeting some criteria while essentially ignoring others. They don't all need to be met.

To me, defining literature is like defining art. One may see a smattering of shades and colors splayed about a canvas in a way that they deem is worthy of magnum opus status, and another may see a mess that needs to be thrown off the easel. It's subjective.