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!
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