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Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose, fiction, drama, poetry,[1] and including both print and digital writing.[2] In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, also known as orature[3] much of which has been transcribed.[4][5] Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.
Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and essays. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other written information on a particular subject.[6][7]
Definitions of literature have varied over time.[12] In Western Europe, prior to the 18th century, literature denoted all books and writing. Literature can be seen as returning to older, more inclusive notions, so that cultural studies, for instance, include, in addition to canonical works, popular and minority genres. The word is also used in reference to non-written works: to "oral literature" and "the literature of preliterate culture".
The use of the term "literature" here is a little problematic because of its origins in the Latin littera, "letter", essentially writing. Alternatives such as "oral forms" and "oral genres" have been suggested but the word literature is widely used.[5]
Oral literature is an ancient human tradition found in "all corners of the world".[17] Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures:
The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.[20] According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a "parallel products of a literate society".[21]
All ancient Greek literature was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so.[22] Homer's epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally.[23] As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience, but making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition as unreliable.[24] The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition.[25]
The enduring significance of oral traditions is underscored in a systemic literature review on indigenous languages in South Africa, within the framework of contemporary linguistic challenges. Oral literature is crucial for cultural preservation, linguistic diversity, and social justice, as evidenced by the postcolonial struggles and ongoing initiatives to safeguard and promote South African indigenous languages.[30]
The beginning of Roman literature dates to 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play.[67] Literature in Latin would flourish for the next six centuries, and includes essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings.
The Qur'an (610 AD to 632 AD),[68] the main holy book of Islam, had a significant influence on the Arab language, and marked the beginning of Islamic literature. Muslims believe it was transcribed in the Arabic dialect of the Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad.[28][69] As Islam spread, the Quran had the effect of unifying and standardizing Arabic.[28]
Theological works in Latin were the dominant form of literature in Europe typically found in libraries during the Middle Ages. Western Vernacular literature includes the Poetic Edda and the sagas, or heroic epics, of Iceland, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and the German Song of Hildebrandt. A later form of medieval fiction was the romance, an adventurous and sometimes magical narrative with strong popular appeal.[70]
Controversial, religious, political and instructional literature proliferated during the European Renaissance as a result of the Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press[71] around 1440, while the Medieval romance developed into the novel.[72]
In England in the late 1820s, growing political and social awareness, "particularly among the utilitarians and Benthamites, promoted the possibility of including courses in English literary study in the newly formed London University". This further developed into the idea of the study of literature being "the ideal carrier for the propagation of the humanist cultural myth of a well educated, culturally harmonious nation".[74]
The very best in literature is annually recognized by the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det mest framstende verket i en idealisk riktning).[88][89]
Some researchers suggest that literary fiction can play a role in an individual's psychological development.[90] Psychologists have also been using literature as a therapeutic tool.[91][92] Psychologist Hogan argues for the value of the time and emotion that a person devotes to understanding a character's situation in literature;[93] that it can unite a large community by provoking universal emotions, as well as allowing readers access to different cultures, and new emotional experiences.[94] One study, for example, suggested that the presence of familiar cultural values in literary texts played an important impact on the performance of minority students.[95]
Psychologist Maslow's ideas help literary critics understand how characters in literature reflect their personal culture and the history.[96] The theory suggests that literature helps an individual's struggle for self-fulfillment.[97][98]
The King James Version of the Bible has been called "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language", "the most important book in English religion and culture", and "arguably the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world"[103] - principally because of its literary style and widespread distribution. Prominent atheist figures such as the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being "a giant step in the maturing of English literature" and "a great work of literature", respectively, with Dawkins adding, "A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian".[104][105]
Societies in which preaching has great importance, and those in which religious structures and authorities have a near-monopoly of reading and writing and/or a censorship role, may impart a religious gloss to much of the literature those societies produce or retain - as for example in the European Middle Ages. The traditions of close study of religious texts has furthered the development of techniques and theories in literary studies.
Prior to the 19th century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set in metrical lines: "any kind of subject consisting of Rhythm or Verses".[106] Possibly as a result of Aristotle's influence (his Poetics), "poetry" before the 19th century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art.[clarification needed][112] As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition;[113][114] hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.
As noted above, prose generally makes far less use of the aesthetic qualities of language than poetry.[107][108][115] However, developments in modern literature, including free verse and prose poetry have tended to blur the differences, and American poet T.S. Eliot suggested that while: "the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure".[116] There are verse novels, a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Eugene Onegin (1831) by Alexander Pushkin is the most famous example.[117]
Nonfiction can fall within the broad category of literature as "any collection of written work", but some works fall within the narrower definition "by virtue of the excellence of their writing, their originality and their general aesthetic and artistic merits".[133]
Drama is literature intended for performance.[134] The form is combined with music and dance in opera and musical theatre (see libretto). A play is a written dramatic work by a playwright that is intended for performance in a theatre; it comprises chiefly dialogue between characters. A closet drama, by contrast, is written to be read rather than to be performed; the meaning of which can be realized fully on the page.[135] Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently. e24fc04721
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