THE 5 FUNCTIONS OF LITERATURE. THEY MESS WITH YOUR HEART AND YOUR MIND

 

The 5 functions of Literature. Heart and mind

 

When you take a book from the shelf and sit down, comfortably, to enjoy reading or even when you download an e-book to read on your computer or cell phone, some motivation led you to that.

 

Perhaps what motivated you to choose a particular book was the need to find answers to political and social problems. Another possibility could be the desire to get emotionally involved with reading and extract pleasure, joy, anger or a multitude of feelings from it.

 

It may also be that you have chosen a book by a writer you admire, not only for the story itself, but also mainly for the way he writes, the quality of his writing, which makes his works always beautiful and with artistic perfection.

 

Maybe you want to acquire new knowledge, or delve into what you somehow already know. Finally, you may just want to relax, entertain yourself, enjoy your “journey” in the chosen story as only Literature can provide.

 

In case you have not noticed, we have just gone through the 5 functions of Literature. Aristotle was the first thinker who discussed the functions of Literature in his work Poetics, defining the three functions of literary texts: cognitive, aesthetic and cathartic. However, in the current context, several studies incorporate other functions of the Literature, which you will get to know in detail below.

 

1- Political-social function 

To carry out social and political criticism – as the name implies, the literary work you are reading may be describing a portrait of the reality in which the writer is inserted. He can describe, criticize, mock or satirize the problems encountered in the society of which he is a part.

 

Some call this engaged Literature. In this universe, issues such as racism, political corruption, wars, separatist conflicts, drought and a multitude of political and social events can be grouped together. Examples:

 

Morte e vida Severina (Death and life Severina) – João Cabral de Melo Neto;

Germinal – Émile Zola;

Crime e castigo (Crime and Punishment) – Fiódor Dostoivéski;

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas) – Machado de Assis. 

 

Excerpt from the poem Morte e Vida Severina (Death and life Severina), which was set to music by Chico Buarque and staged at the Teatro da Universidade Católica de São Paulo, in the 1960s.

 

2- Cathartic function 

Releasing emotions and feelings – the word catharsis (from the Greek catharses), means purification, purgation. Aristotle used it when he said that tragedies (theatrical performances) purify the emotions. In Literature, catharsis can be a kind of emotional discharge that gives the reader or writer a certain relief from psychological or moral tension or anxiety.

 

When reading a particular book, you may experience extremely strong emotional situations that cause you to feel feelings of joy, anger, sadness, loneliness, anger or fulfillment. This predominant role, of course, will differ from reader to reader.

 

In the case of the writer, the act of writing can be a catharsis, because he often writes to vent, to put out his tensions and to sublimate his frustrations. By experiencing the emotions and tensions transmitted by the characters in the narratives, the reader or writer would be releasing their own tensions, fears, frustrations and thus freeing themselves from these negative emotions.

 

The song Como Nosso Pais (Like our parents), which talks about the generation gap accentuated by the repression of the military dictatorship, was composed in the 1970s by Belchior, and immortalized in the voice of the muse Elis Regina. The song was released on the album Alucinação, became one of the greatest classics of Brazilian popular music and appears in Rolling Stone magazine among the 100 best Brazilian songs in history.

Belchior used the word “disturbing” to describe the feeling brought by the song. He described Like Our Parents as a bitter song, a critique of the inertia of youth, which accommodated itself when it should not and stopped questioning.

 

3- Aesthetic function 

Generate admiration for the beauty – the main objective is to provoke admiration in the reader due to the artistic perfection with which the author works the text. You perceive and value the beauty of the work and that gives you pleasure. Parnassian poets were always looking for the beauty. They “constructed” a poem as a sculptor carves marble until his statue was perfectly finished.

 

Olavo Bilac – Parnassianism – due to the ability to compose poems with perfect rhyme, rhythm and meter. In the poem Profissão de Fé (Profession of faith), he compares the work of the poet to the craftsmanship of a goldsmith in the production of a jewel.

 

João Guimarães Rosa – 3rd generation of Modernism – due to the ability to create a unique vocabulary and reality for his works.

 

Considered the greatest Brazilian writer of the 20th century, practically “reinvented” the Portuguese language. He built new words that free language from its merely utilitarian function, recovering poetic language.

 

His Literature is a fusion of archaisms, popular culture and the erudite world. It is mainly rural locations and their universes of poverty, always peripheral to the world of capital and the division of labor, that appear in his work.

 

In this excerpt from the book Manuelzão e Miguilim* you can observe characteristics of the political, social and aesthetic functions.

* The book's title refers to two people, Manuel (an adult) and Miguilim (a child). Manuelzão is Manuel's nickname and Miguilim is the Miguel's nickname. Translating Guimarães Rosa's text is not easy because of the words he creates from the language of the humble people of the Brazilian countryside.

 

4- Cognitive function 

Transmit knowledge – the main objective is the acquisition of knowledge. The writer has a personal perception (knowledge) of the reality that surrounds him and produces texts that communicate this knowledge or perception, where feeling and reason merge. The literary work, thus, expresses this intuitive and aesthetic knowledge about the reality that surrounds him.

 

In the poem Dois e Dois: Quatro (Two and Two: Four), the poet Ferreira Gullar reveals his knowledge about life, which, despite expressing a very personal perception, ends up presenting what most people perceive in their own lives.

5- Playful function 

To entertain, relax, involve – Literature can also have the function of simply entertaining the reader, that is, entertaining and providing some kind of pleasure, such as relaxation and fun.

 

This is the most basic function of Literature, because, in reality, the reader is always looking for literary texts that can involve him, that is, “trap” him.

 

The writer Luis Fernando Veríssimo has written a series of books that approach people's daily lives in the most bizarre situations with a lot of humor and depth. It is precisely the humor that involves the reader in a relaxing and pleasant atmosphere. One of those books is The Lies Men Tell. He also wrote The Lies Women Tell.

 

How many times do you lie a day? Do not worry; you do not have to answer now. It is also not often you tell a lie, just every now and then. In fact, when you lie, it is because you have to. To protect the other and, preferably, the other. It was like that with the mother, the girlfriend, the wife, the mother-in-law. All for the good socializing, for the harmony inside the house, for a more pleasant night with friends. You only lie, deep down, to save people and, above all, for the good of women. Luis Fernando Verissimo, this humorous observer of Brazilian daily life, brings together in The lies men tell an amusing repertoire of stories like this ― so indispensable that, suddenly, they even became truths. Depends on who listens. Depends on who counts.

Used and suggested links

Like our parents - Elis Regina

Like our parents - Belchior

Andy Davis, Master of voice reacts to Elis Regina

Death and life Severina - animation

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SAY, IN JUST A FEW WORDS, WHAT IS LITERATURE?

 

What is Literature

Literature is one of those words with which we have a good relationship and that are part of our lives, our daily lives. It is impossible to think about Literature and not think about books, another old acquaintance of ours. However, when we are asked to define what Literature really is, we are left wordless. Precisely the words, the soul of Literature.

 

What is Literature according to dictionary?

 

Aristotle - literary art is imitation

 

The oldest definition used by Literary theorists is the one constructed by Aristotle (384 - 322 BC). For the Greek philosopher, literary art is mimesis (imitation); it is the art that imitates through the word. In other words, imitating reality is part of Literature and men are enchanted by it.

Literature is the art of the written word and it originates from it, more specifically, from littera, letter in Latin. Here it is worth noting that the word is not always written. In Ancient Greece, stories such as The Iliad and Odyssey passed verbally from generation to generation until the historian Homer transcribed them and reached us in book format.

Other Literature Definitions

Literature is also one of the artistic manifestations of human beings, such as music, dance, theater, sculpture, architecture and others. While paints are the raw material of the painter, words are the raw material of the writer. To do this, it requires a set of skills to read and write correctly.

It can also be a career of letters or a set of literary works from a country or an era. Literature, as well as the language it uses, is a communication and action mechanism whose role is to transmit the knowledge and culture of a community at a given time.

 

Finally, we can say that Literature is any manifestation of language that has aesthetic expression as one of its purposes. A discourse does not only intend to communicate something, but also to build a narrative that is beautiful or engaging, sensitive and humanly profound.

Literary and Non-Literary Text 

The literary text is narrative and poetic. Most of the time, language is connotative, that is, words are used not literally but figuratively. The literary text is subjective, has an aesthetic character and not just a linguistic one, whose interpretation is up to the reader.

 That woman is a snake.

 

The informative text, on the other hand, is intended to convey information and does not have the same narrative and artistic elements as the literary text. The writing is objective and denotative so that the reader understands the literal meaning of the words and has no doubts about the text.

Snakes are long, slender-bodied reptiles.

When you read a newspaper, a medical book or an English grammar book, you know you are not facing a literary text because the information is unified for all readers and is not subject to different interpretations. That is where I separate my work as a journalist and as a writer.

Literature and History always go together

It is important to keep in mind that the different Literary Schools or Literary Movements reflect the historical moments that characterize each one of them. The historical and social changes in post-Modernism (1945) take place in increasingly shorter periods due to technological advances.

In my book, I wish I did not have such green eyes; the story unfolds from 1964 to 2016. The changes that took place during this period would be unthinkable for society in the second half of the 20th century. How, three decades ago, could it have been possible to imagine life with smartphones, 4K televisions, blogs, blockchain, NFT, metaverse and cryptocurrencies?

In less than 40 years of writing, I have jumped from pen to typewriter, to computer, to notebook, and I have even used a smartphone to write. At each of these stages, there was an evolution in my interpretation of the world as a writer, tremendously fast compared to previous periods.

The subject of the next post will be the functions of Literature and literary genres. Don't miss it!