This week: Literature. What is it, exactly? Nothing else besides footnotes this week, so enjoy them and then go have a great week. Let's get to it.
The signs in the lobby of the county library left nothing open to interpretation: Children's Books Downstairs. The other signs intrigued me long before I dared venture into the rooms they indicated. The big room past the librarians' desk, full of towering racks of books and people quietly nosing through volume after volume or sitting at the tables reading the newspaper, that was for non-fiction. And the smaller room, off to the side had the curious label "Fiction and Lit."
I knew the difference between fiction and non-fiction. My teachers at school had drilled that into us from day one. But, what was "lit?" Fast forward a few years and I got dropped into the barely organized chaos that is junior high. One of my classes was English Lit. By now, I had figured out that lit. was short for literature, but I still didn't really know what that meant. Not in any way that distinguished it from normal fiction, anyway.
Fast forward another few years and I've made it through all my high school and college English courses save for one, a three-hundred level humanities requirement called "Literature of America, pre-World War II," or something like that. What it boiled down to was that I had to take a class and I had already read through four of the six books required for the class.1 The class was fine; I enjoyed it but I don't know that I could have told you what that teacher and that class meant by "Literature." The stories we read were just stories. I mean, sure, they might be historically or culturally significant, but is that what made them literature?
There is, of course, no easy answer. But, because we need to start somewhere, here's a definition from one of my textbooks that I like:2
Literature...designate(s) fictional and imaginative writings—poetry, prose fiction, and drama. In an expanded use, it designates also any other writings (including philosophy, history, and even scientific works addressed to a general audience) that are especially distinguished in form, expression, and emotional power.
But we're not done yet. The authors include this caveat a little further into the entry:
Confusingly, however, “literature” is sometimes applied also, in a sense close to the Latin original, to all written works, whatever their kind or quality. This all-inclusive use is especially frequent with reference to the sum of works that deal with a particular subject matter.
These two dissimilar ideas are why we have textbooks called "Anthology of American Literature 1700 to 1850"3 and why we can group the writing on any given subject into a corpus under the heading, "literature of science" or "literature of medicine." But somewhere in between these uses is another use that isn't as common as it once was, but no less interesting for that - the use of "literature of" as a genre marker.
The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms And Literary Theory follows its entry for literature with this kind of usage by providing a surprisingly lengthy definition of the literature of escape.4 Just for fun, I ran a quick search for collocations of "literature of" through the Corpus of Contemporary American English looking for more results like this. The majority of the results5 were from the standard two usages mentioned above, but there were several genre-esque results as well. Three that caught my eye were "literature of the fantastic," "literature of fear," and "literature of fact." None of these are quite genres as we've been discussing it, but they're not the default college course either.6
Of course there's one more use of literature that we haven't really talked about and it's literature as a polite phrase for all the pamphlets and leaflets handed out by to passersby by missionaries, hucksters, salesmen, and carnival barkers alike. You can walk into any salesroom around the world and ask to see "the literature." You'll be barraged with booklet after fold-out poster after flyer by eager salespeople in no time at all.
And that brings me to my definition: Literature is a collection. It is an umbrella under which we can group works with similar themes or those that were written in a similar time and place. We can pile all our printed material under the umbrella of literature and we can use that same umbrella to cast shade at any works not worthy of our attention.7
In the beginning of this (rambling and ramshackle) essay, I asked what is the difference between literature and fiction? It turns out that sometimes there is no difference. Fiction is literature, maybe with a few extra words for context. But literature is also non-fiction. It's a collection of similar themes and ideas. And sometimes literature is no more genre than pile of printed material. Because, in the end, literature means a collection of writings, whether that is a sales brochure fading in the sun, or a collection of tropes that went out of fashion two-hundred years ago.
I'm not quite sure I got where I was looking to go this week, but I enjoyed the trip anyway. I hope you did, too.
Stay curious,
J
Huck Finn, The Great Gatsby, The Jungle, and...something by Hemmingway, I think.
"A Glossary of Literary Terms," tenth edition (2012) by M.H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, page 199.
I made that up, but I'm sure something like it is available in the backroom of some used bookstore in any university town.
Literature of terror, on the other hand, gets a brief, "see gothic novel/fiction; horror story."
I mean, I only skimmed the results because there were 18 pages worth and I'm on deadline, but if you're looking for a dissertation idea, you're welcome.
Although I would totally take a course titled "the literature of fear." I'd probably take one on the literature of fact, too, if I'm being honest.
At least it thinks it is. I've had more than one peer or professor in a writing class sneer at my science fiction stories while they word on <aim nose high into the air> their norm-bursting work of modern, ahem, literature.