Introduction to Literature

1.0.1 General Introduction It is very difficult to define literature conclusively; as there can be as many definitions as the number of literary critics and they may come up with their own definitions according to their own observations and expectations. The word Literature is variously defined by different people in different times. Literature is literally "acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts or works of art, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and nonfiction, drama and poetry, but in a sense, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and the folktales. Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. Some popular definitions of literature include: Writings whose value lies in the beauty of form or emotional effect. (Concise Oxford Dictionary ) Writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest. The body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age. (Webster, 3d Ed.) Written material such as poetry, novels, essays, etc., especially works of imagination characterized by excellence of style and expression and by themes of general or enduring interest. (Collins English Dictionary) Literature consists of those writings which interpret the meanings of nature and life, in words of charm and power, touched with the personality of the author, in artistic forms of permanent interest. (Henry Van Dyke) Literature is the garment which one puts on what he says or writes so that it may appear more attractive. added that literature is a slice of life that has been given direction and meaning, an artistic interpretation of the world according to the percipients point of views. (Imam Jafar al-Sadiq) Literature is an 'apocalypse of nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret,' a 'continuous revelation' of the God-like in the terrestrial and common, which ever endures there, and is brought out now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness ... there being touches of it (i.e. the God-like) in the dark scornful indignation of a Byron, nay, in the withered mockery of a French sceptic, his mockery of the false, a love and worship of the true ... how much more in the sphere harmony of a Shakespeare, the cathedral music of a Milton; something of it too in those humble, genuine, lark-notes of a Burns, skylark starting from the humble furrow far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there." (Carlyle) Walter Peter referred to the matter of imaginative or artistic literature as a transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms. Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. (Ezra Pound) Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value: "Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity" (Rebecca West) But such definitions really assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, a letter of the alphabet, literature is first and foremost mankind's entire body of writing; after that

Rozi Khan GJPGC Swat.

Introduction to Literature / 1_General Introduction

it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing. But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may rightly speak of oral literature or the literature of preliterate peoples. The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature is the organization of words to give pleasure; through them it elevates and transforms experience; through them it functions in society as a continuing symbolic criticism of values. Nations can have literatures, as can corporations, philosophical schools or historical periods. Popular belief commonly holds that the literature of a nation, for example, comprises the collection of texts which make it a whole nation. The Hebrew Bible, Persian Shahnama, the Indian Mahabharata, Ramayana and Thirukural, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Constitution of the United States, all fall within this definition of a kind of literature. More generally, one can equate a literature with a collection of stories, poems, and plays that revolve around a particular topic. In this case, the stories, poems and plays may or may not have nationalistic implications. The Western Canon forms one such literature. Classifying a specific item as part of a literature (whether as American literature, advertising literature, Indian or Roman literature) can involve severe difficulties. To some people, the term "literature" can apply broadly to any symbolic record which can include images and sculptures, as well as letters. To others, a literature must only include examples of text composed of letters, or other narrowly defined examples of symbolic written language (Egyptian hieroglyphs, for example). Even more conservative interpreters of the concept would demand that the text have a physical form, usually on paper or some other portable form, to the exclusion of inscriptions or digital media. Furthermore, people may perceive a difference between "literature" and some popular forms of written work. The terms "literary fiction" and "literary merit" often serve to distinguish between individual works. For example, almost all literate people perceive the works of Charles Dickens as "literature", whereas some tend to look down on the works of Jeffrey Archer as unworthy of inclusion under the general heading of "English literature". Critics may exclude works from the classification "literature", for example, on the grounds of a poor standard of grammar and syntax, of an unbelievable or disjointed story-line, or of inconsistent or unconvincing characters. Genre fiction (for example: romance, crime, or science fiction) may also become excluded from consideration as "literature". Frequently, the texts that make up literature crossed over these boundaries. Illustrated stories, hypertexts (a collection of documents that contain cross-references called hyperlinks), cave paintings and inscribed monuments have all at one time or another pushed the boundaries of "literature". Different historical periods have emphasized various characteristics of literature. Early works often had an overt or covert religious or didactic purpose. Moralizing or prescriptive literature stems from such sources. The exotic nature of romance flourished from the Middle-Ages onwards, whereas the Age of Reason manufactured nationalistic epics and philosophical tracts. Romanticism emphasized the popular folk literature and emotive involvement, but gave way in the 19th-century West to a phase of so-called realism and naturalism, investigations into what is real. The 20th century brought demands for symbolism or psychological insight in the delineation and development of character. 1.0.2 Literary Genre

Genre is a French term derived from the Latin genus, generis, meaning type, sort, or kind. It designates the literary form or type into which works are classified according to what they have in common, either in their formal structures or in their treatment of subject
Rozi Khan GJPGC Swat. Introduction to Literature / 1_General Introduction

matter, or both. The study of genres may be of value in three ways. On the simplest level, grouping works offers us an orderly way to talk about an otherwise bewildering number of literary texts. More importantly, if we recognize the genre of a text, we may also have a better idea of its intended overall structure and/or subject. Finally, a genre approach can deepen our sense of the value of any single text, by allowing us to view it comparatively, alongside many other texts of its type. 1.0.3 Classification by Types

While the number of genres and their subdivisions has proliferated since classical times, the division of the literary domain into three major genres (by Plato, Aristotle, and, later, Horace), is still useful. These are lyric, drama, and epic, and they are distinguished by manner of imitation, that is, by how the characters and the action are presented. The following three genres briefly summarize the main differences in the way action and characters are presented in the lyric, drama, and the epic. Lyric: The poet writes the poem as his or her own experience; often the poet uses first person ("I"); however, this speaker is not necessarily the poet but may be a fictional character or persona. Drama: The characters are obviously separate from the writer; in fact, they generally seem to have lives of their own and their speech reflects their individual personalities. The writer is present, of course, in stage directions (which the audience isn't aware of during a performance), and occasionally a character acts as a mouthpiece for the writer. Epic: This long narrative is primarily written in third person. However, the epic poet makes his presence known, sometimes by speaking in first person, as when the muses are appealed to for inspiration (the invocation) or by reporting the direct speech of the characters.

The lyric includes all the shorter forms of poetry, e.g., song, ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet. Up to the nineteenth century, the short lyric poem was considered the least important of the genres, but with the Romantic Movement the prestige of the lyric increased considerably. The relative brevity of the lyric leads to an emphasis upon tight formal construction and concentrated unity. Typically, the subject matter is expressive, whether of personal emotions, such as love or grief, or of public emotions, such as patriotism or reverence or celebration. Drama presents the actions and words of characters on a stage. The conventional formal arrangement into acts and scenes derives ultimately from the practice in Greek drama of alternating scenes of dialogue with choral sections. From classical example also comes the standard subdivision into tragedy and comedy. Historically, many of the specific conventions of these two types have changed. We refer, for instance, to Greek tragedy, or to medieval tragedy, or to Shakespearean tragedy. This does not deny interrelationships between them; rather, it emphasizes the equal importance of their distinctive features. One thing that Greek tragedy and Shakespearean tragedy share is the "Tragic Vision." It is helpful, in discussing plays, to have some familiarity with some basic conventions of drama. Every play typically involves the direct presentation of actions and words by characters on a stage. Although the structural principles are quite fluid, dramatic form often tends to move from exposition or presentation of the dramatic situation, through complication, setting of the direction of the dramatic conflict, to a climax or turning point (connected to Aristotle's peripeteia or "change of fortune"), and then through further action, resolving the various complications, to the denouement or conclusion of the play. This conventional movement in drama is not an absolute, but a tendency we observe, and variations are frequent. ("Exposition" of character motivation, for example, need not be limited to the first act.) It is useful to understand this conventional structure of drama so
Rozi Khan GJPGC Swat. Introduction to Literature / 1_General Introduction

that we can better appreciate departures from it, as well as apply it more specifically to tragedies, as well as to comedies. The epic, in the classical formulation of the three genres, referred exclusively to the "poetic epic." It was of course in verse, rather lengthy (24 books in Homer, 12 books in Virgil), and tended to be episodic. It dealt in elevated language with heroic figures (human heroes and deities) whose exploits affected whole civilizations or even, by implication, the whole of mankind. Its lengthiness was properly a response to the magnitude of the subject material. Today, we classify epics with other forms of the "mixed kind." That is, we see the classical epic as but one of the generic subdivisions of the epic or fiction. This broader classification can include many kinds of narratives, in prose as well as in verse. Thus the "mixed kind" now includes the novel, the folktale, the fable, the fairy tale, even the short story and novella, as well as the romance, which can be in either prose or verse. Of these, the novel and the romance tend to continue the epic tradition of length (we speak of the "sweep" of a sizeable novel). It should be noted that the three-part division of lyric, drama, and epic or fiction, while useful and relatively comprehensive, does not provide a place for all of the known literary genres. Some obvious omissions are the essay, the pastoral, biography and autobiography, and satire. 1.0.4 How Literary Critics Have Used Genres

Critics have employed the genre approach to literature in a number of ways. From the Renaissance through most of the eighteenth century, for example, they often attempted to judge a text according to what they thought of as the fixed "laws of kind," insisting upon purity, that is, fidelity to type. Thus the placement of comic episodes in otherwise predominantly serious works was frowned upon, and hybrid forms like tragicomedy were dismissed. There was also a tendency to rank the genres in a hierarchy, usually with epic or tragedy at the top and shorter forms, such as the epigram and the subdivisions of the lyric, at the bottom. Modern critics have a different view of genres, and are likely to point out how, in actual practice, writers play against as well as with generic traditions and how specific conventions are imitated or defied, modified or renovated. 1.0.5 Literary Genres: Conclusion

All of the arts consist of genres. To name some of the outstanding types: in painting, there are the landscape, the still life, the portrait; in music there are the sonata, the symphony, the song; in film we have the domestic comedy, the horror/thriller, the Western. If students think of the forms with which they are most familiar (perhaps the film genres), they will understand that for sophisticated appreciation, they need always to be acquainted with the specific conventions of the type. The study of genres essentially is the study of conventions. And in literature as in the other arts, an acquaintance with generic conventions is critical to enriching our responses to particular texts. It is true that since we are reading "landmarks," there will always be something marvelously unique about each great work studied. But in each case there will also be a set of expectations connected to its type, to its generic tradition, as well as to the Zeitgeist (the "spirit of the time") in which the work was written.

Rozi Khan GJPGC Swat.

Introduction to Literature / 1_General Introduction