WHAT IS LITERATURE?

WHAT IS LITERATURE?

R.J.REES, Introduction to literature:

     “Any writing where words

       and language used is ‘literature’”.

For example, Time-Table, Brochures, Catalogues, etc.

Here we can take a example,

Customer to sales girl:”I wanna buy mobile. Please show me its literature”.

Thus in broader sense Wordsworth’s poem and book on surgery are literature.

Take one more example,

     We shall compare two pieces of writing about London.

1.  One is taken from popular encyclopedia.

2.                The other is taken of Wordsworth’s famous sonnet “Upon Westminster Bridge”.

We shall forget for a moment that one piece is prose and the other is verse: much more important is the difference in ‘purpose’.

The writer in the encyclopedia had a very simple purpose, which was to give us as many about London as he could in a small space.

But, Wordsworth’s purpose was quite different. He wanted to communicate feelings, not facts; emotions, not information.

The sudden intense pleasure he felt in the beauty of the man-made landscape, and the strange silence of a city not yet awake, was too good to keep to him ’.

     “He wanted the reader to feel what he ‘felt’”.

                                                           -R.J.REES

Let us try to define literature more specifically:

           “LITERATURE holds the Mirror

                         up to Nature.”

-by  William          Shakespeare in his ‘Hamlet’.

Dictionary meaning,

Literature is:

            “Written work with Artistic values.”

Creative literature is fictional because creative ideas make literature fictional.

According to Plato,

           “Literature makes ‘Nothing’

                  but, rational fools.”

           “Literature is bundle of lies.”

  R. J. Rees, concern with the statement,

     “Everything which is in written form is literature”.

               

But, the writing which gives delightful feeling, imagination and most is that its timelessness or permanence is literature.

Often we found,

                “Society never likes to listen the

       ‘Truth’ which is not convenient to them.”

                                                    

And, Literature tries to say that those are inconvenient truths.

           “Literature expands the

                        Horizon of our thinking.”

Literature says never it’s truth, thoughts and feelings directly, if it would be direct it would become ‘philosophy’.

                                          

“Philosophy is a direct way of feelings,          and thoughts but, literature is not.”

Relationship between Literature & Religion, &, Literature and science & Technology.

·     According to literary terms,

Literature is not in favor with Religion, Science & Technology. Because, literature never agrees to the rigidity and orthodoxy of religion. And it never agrees to the Technology and Science. Because, these both are Harmful to the human kinds.

Thus, we can say that Literature only takes place besides the human beings and humanity.

Literature basically holds two types,

·     Literaedidectiese (Latin)- didactic literature- it aims to teach or to give information. (Anti-literature).

·     Literaehumanieonare- literature – it aims to please, to move, to transport, and to entertain.

DE Quincy,

Literature of knowledge: philosophy, economics, history, math, physics, information brochures..etc.

Literature of power: poetry, drama,     novel, dance, painting, sculpture… etc.                 

Terry Eagleton recently wrote an essay on this particular subject, “What is Literature”?

According to Terry Eagleton,

     Literature is,

·     Flux and static.

·     There is no good vs. evil.

·     Virtue vs. vise.

“Art is not a mirror to reflect reality

        But a hammer to shape it.”

                             -Bertolt Brecht.

According to R.J.REES,

         “A consciousness of Moral Values”.

“Literature may be good, bad or       indifferent; but good literature will have same,    if not all of before qualities.”

Conclusion:-

     We often found ‘pain’ in literature. Though, it has that test to give delight. Because,

             

“Best form of happiness is in ‘pain’”.

At last I can say that,

     Literature provides one the most direct ways of stimulating their mind’s ‘imagination’.

             

              “Literature helps us to know

                  that, ‘Who We Are”?.