What Is “Literature”?
That’s the question we’ll investigate to begin.
What does literature mean to you? How do we define literature? What is counted as literature and why? What does literature have to do with popular culture? Does literature have value in today’s society? How does literature fit into our modern lives? Is literature important anymore? Why do we need (or not need) literature? How should literature be approached in schools? How have different concepts/ideas been portrayed in literature throughout history? What is canonical literature? Why does a lot of canonical literature reflect limited points of view?
While we may not find complete answers to all these questions in just this first section, we’ll at least get the discussion going. At the end of this course, you’ll be prepared to make an argument about whether or not a “non-traditional” work (such as a video game or lyrics from a contemporary song) should be considered “literature.” But, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves…
By reading and discussing literature, we expand our imagination, our sense of what is possible, and our ability to empathize with others. We can also improve our ability to read critically and interpret texts by gaining appreciation for different theories of interpretation.
The end of this section provides approaches to extracting meaning from literature, from “close reading” to various lenses of Literary Criticism, specifically:
- Gender and Feminist Criticism
- Marxist/Materialist Criticism
- New Historicism
- Ethnic and Cultural Criticism
In later sections that focus on the specific literary forms of fiction, poetry, and drama, we will utilize these approaches in some of our interpretive work.
By the end of this section, you’ll be able to:
- Define “literature” as studied in the humanities and explain your own definition
- Define “canon” and describe the pros and cons of studying “canonical” texts
- Explain why literature is a subject of study
- Define “genre” and “form” as they relate to the study of literature, list examples both broad and specific, and identify the genre/form of a text
- Describe the major distinguishing characteristics of fiction, poetry, and drama
- Identify the principles of Gender Studies and Feminist theory and explain how they can be used to interpret literature
- Identify the principles of Marxist/Materialist theory and explain how they can be used to interpret literature
- Identify the principles of New Historicist theory and explain how they can be used to interpret literature
- Identify the principles of Ethnic and Cultural Studies theory and explain how they can be used to interpret literature
