Literature
What Are the Types of Literature?
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There are many types, or genres, of literature. We often think of poetry, prose, and plays, and each of these genres, can be broken down into more specific forms, such as comedy, tragedy, epic, science fiction, romance, mystery, and satire.
Poetry
Poetry is language in its most concentrated form. A poet uses the sounds, rhythms, and meanings of words to paint pictures with language. Poetry is often intended to be read on the page, but there are many poems that need to be read out loud to be fully appreciated.
Prose
We usually think of novels, shortstory, or essays when we talk about prose. Prose writers use language to create a mixture of characters, places, and events that construct an entire world on the page, and in the reader's mind.
Drama
Plays are works of literature that are generally intended to be performed by actors in front of an audience. Dialog and plot are two of the key ingredients in creating a play.
William Shakespeare is regarded by many as one of, if not the, best playwright in the English Language. He wrote 38 plays, including Comedies, such as The Taming of the Shrew and As You Like It ; Histories, such as King Richard the Third and King Henry the Fifth ; Tragedies, such as Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet ; and Romances, such as Pericles, Prince of Tyre and The Tempest .
What Characterizes Great Literature?
An average book will tell a story and maybe describe some interesting characters or incidents; it might also explain how something is done, or relate the history of something we usually take for granted.
A great book gives us all that, and "something else." A great book makes us see connections among various phenomenon and look at something in a way we've never thought about before. A great book might also take us into the mind of the writer and make us feel that we actually know him or her, and that the characters, events, and ideas in the book have become part of our experience.
A great book can provide us with what American poet Robert Frost called a sense of recognition: seeing something we know well, but in a way that is unfamiliar or new to us.
How Is Literature Made?
Writing an "ordinary" book is hard work. Writing a great book takes hard work, extreme dedication to the art and craft of writing, and even a touch of inspiration. Great writers write, then rewrite, rethink, and rewrite again.
Like any craftspeople, writers have a wide array of tools that they can use to put their words and ideas together. Here are some of them:
Diction is the writer's choice of words. Writers are always thinking about which words fit together, and looking for new and better ways to put words together to express their ideas. "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Herman Melville's Moby Dick is one of the more memorable first lines of any English novel. Likewise, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is one of those sentences that we remember even if we've never read the book.
They're both simple phrases, yet they are powerful, memorable, and evocative. A writer's job is far from done when the first sentence is right. A great writer carefully considers every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. Diction can be formal (think of the King James translation of the Bible), informal (closer to everyday speech), or poetic.
Characterization is the sum total of a writer's efforts to create a character. Dialog, description, narration and much more can be used to reveal the nature of a character.
Metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things, usually without using the words "like" or "as". "All the world's a stage" is an obvious metaphor. There are other, less obvious metaphors, such as when we think about our planet as a mother.
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Allegory is a kind of extended metaphor in which an entire book, poem, or story can signify something other than the actual story that is being told. Many works of literature have several levels of meaning. George Orwells' Animal Farm, for example, can easily be read as the problems of a group of farm animals, but it is also an allegory of the political and social changes that occurred in the Soviet Union. Many allegories are not so obvious.
Symbol: the use of a character, event, thing, word, image, or object to represent more than its literal meaning. For example, spring can often be a symbol for rebirth, renewal, and regeneration, while winter can be a symbol for death, stagnation, and decay. How symbols are used and what they "mean" vary from work to work.
We often see in great books that characters and incidents signify much more than what is on the page. The great white whale in Herman Melville's Moby Dick is more than a very large, aquatic mammal; it becomes a symbol for eternity, evil, dread, mortality, and even death, something so great and powerful that we humans cannot even agree on what it might mean.
Likewise, Tolstoy's War and Peace describes many events that occurred during Napoloen's invasion of Russia, but it does much, much more. We learn of the characters' passions and fears, we learn of Tolstoy's views of life and death, that humans are part of some larger, ever-changing whole, part of a great and beautiful pattern of life, love, and death.
Point of view: who tells a story and how it is told. A story can be told by a narrator who is the main character in the story (usually an "I", or first person narrator), it can be told by a secondary character, or it can be told by an omniscient narrator who is not a character in the story (often called third-person narrator, or objective narrator). In some more modern works, the narrator can be a character who doesn't have a clue as to what's actually happening.
Rhythm: the "flow" of the words in a poem or story. Normally associated with the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem to create a smooth or choppy rhythm; prose writers also manipulate rhythm, although its effects are usually not as obvious as in poetry.
Plot: the arranging of the events in a story. A story can be told, for example, in chronological order (from beginning to end), or can start with some significant event and jump from event to event in any order the writer feels will create the best effect of tension and release.
Setting: where (or when) a story takes place. Often the setting will be used to create a mood (as in the foggy, muddy, labyrinthine London of Charles Dickens' Bleak House), or it could even become a sort of character. A city can be a gleaming beacon of hope and prosperity, or it could represent the bowels of hell. Likewise, a forest can signify a place for reflection, rejuvenation, and freedom, or it can be a frightening place, full of unknown terrors. (Here we are also getting into the areas of symbol and metaphor. There are times when many of a writer's tools will overlap.)
Nonfiction books can also have the same all-encompassing means of telling much more than an interesting story. A book about coffee, for example, can give us the facts of its cultivation, production, distribution, and brewing. A more creative writer, however, might give us much more; might examine, for example, how coffee was discovered in Africa, transported to South America, and the historical and social consequences of the cultivation and enjoyment of coffee.
How Can I Learn More?
The best way is to read. Read as much as you can, as often as you can. Read anthologies (collections) of poems, plays, stories, or essays, and with time you'll learn the kinds of themes, stories, poems, and writers that appeal to you. Then just keep reading, and think about what you're reading. There's usually a lot more going on than you might think.
Find other people who like to read. Talk to them. Argue a little, and teach each other.
There are lots of classic and not-so-classic texts available on the Internet. The Gutenberg Project, for example, offers free classic texts of all genres and periods.
You probably also have a good public library or school library near you. Use it and get to know your librarian. Librarians love to help, and they love it when their patrons are excited about books. They probably have tons of recommendations for great books to read.
Where Is Literature Made?
Nearly every language has its own oral or written literary tradition. Literature is usually studied according to nation or language, such as:
- German literature
- Latin American Literature
- British Literature
- American Literature
- Asian Literature
- Arabic Liiterature
- French Literature
What Is Literary Criticism?
Literary criticism is an attempt to understand literature and what it means. There are many types, or "schools" of criticism, and they all attempt to do the same thing, but in very different ways.
One of the first Western critics was Aristotle. In his work, Poetics, he attempted to define some characteristics of literature and to determine which characteristics were common to which types of literature. Poetics was essentially a work of classification, a kind of cookbook that identifies the main ingredients of a great story. He defined the elements of tragedy, comedy, and the like. Most of his observations dealt with poetry and theatre, but can be applied to other genres and forms as well.
Other critics have been more interested in the interpretation of literature. What does it all mean? What are the roles of both the reader and the writer in creating meaning? Is there a kind of key that helps us understand a work of literature, or do meanings very from reader to reader or across time?
What Good Is Literature?
Literacy and Thinking
Reading literature encourages thinking, writing, and the expression of ideas. People who feel comfortable expressing their thoughts and opinions can excel in any field.
Creativity
Among other things, reading and appreciating literature encourages creative thinking, what is sometimes known as "thinking outside the box." Writers are often able to make connections that most of us would not. When we can begin to appreciate and understand these connections, we begin to make them ourselves. It encourages us to think metaphorically, and creative, metaphorical thinking is an asset in any field, including science or business.
Books
If you're not sure where to start (there ARE a lot of great books to choose from), try a good anthology:
The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, edited by Michael Meyer, 2005, Bedford Books.
Not exactly compact at over 1500 pages, but this anthology has some great selections of fiction, poetry, and drama, with very readable explanations of the elements of all the forms of writing and some excellent chapters on critical thinking and writing.
What Is the Future of Literature?
No one knows for sure. Some say that the written word is stronger than ever. Some say that it is changing, or even dying. One recent development that is still in its infancy is hypertext. Some brave writers are experimenting, with varied results, with the flexibility that hypertext allows in linking various texts and images. It's a fascinating experiment that might be changing the nature of literacy and literature; or it might just be a great toy. Only time will tell.
