An initial definition:
Coleridge gave succinct
expression to the essence of literature when he said, “Prose is words
in their best order; poetry is the best words in their best order.” I
don’t think that this should mean that poetry is the ultimate literary
art or the purity of expression to which prosaic writing aspires. Yet I
think that some have certainly claimed as much for poetry. And perhaps
Coleridge too insinuates that poetry is superior in his definition.
This can be contested, but what is more certain is that literature
involves words, style, and excellence. These are the basic elements
that compose literature in an broad sense—the variables that remain can
specify an indeterminate number of genres.
Words
Words
are the material component of literature. Though we may be used to
thinking of literature in terms of writing, it does not matter if these
words are written and read or memorized and spoken. Writing and memory
serve the same purpose: conserving the integrity of the work and
preserving its existence. Words are symbolic in nature because they are
signs which represent other things. Written words symbolize sounds as
well as concepts. Sometimes written words symbolize multiple and
contradictory concepts and multiple sounds which only become definite
when put into a particular context. In absolute isolation, a word is
meaningless; it takes the context of a speaker/writer and a
listener/reader to associate the word with a referent. So much more can
be said about the nature of language at the level of the word, but to
do the topic of literature justice, we need to move on to higher
structures and tackle style—or what Coleridge called “best order.”
Style and form
The
invention of literary style certainly occurred hundreds of years before
the invention of writing. At first, it may have been completely up to
each storyteller to imbue a tale with interesting artistic flourishes.
They must have relied on formulaic phrasings and ready-made names for
things to add artistic texture to an otherwise literal account of an
event. As storytellers added more artistic techniques to their
repertoire and as the same story was told over and over again, perhaps
literary devices became ingrained in the tale itself. However, as
memory was the mode of preserving the literary quality of each tale,
early literature must have changed greatly over time. This is the
disadvantage and the advantage of an oral tradition: each tale has the
potential to evolve with each retelling. Perhaps meter came about as a
way to aid the memory in reciting these formalized literary creations,
stabilizing the tale through generations. Or perhaps it came about as a
means to link the verbal telling of a story to the musical and
kinesthetic telling of a story; chanted words, drum beats, and dance
exchanged rhythms and synthesized into a new type of art. It is unclear
how quickly the invention of language led to the invention of stylized
language. It seems likely, however, that the invention of stylized
language was nearly simultaneous with the invention of rudimentary
literature in its two forms: poetry and literary prose.
It
seems that literature has only these two forms: poetry and prose. Any
literary work can be classified as belonging to one or both of these.
All poetry is literary, though all verse is not necessarily literary.
Aristotle, in the Poetics, contends that anything—even
history—could be written in verse and one would not necessarily call it
poetry. Prose, on the other hand, can either be literary or nonliterary
because it does not carry the same “pure art” associations as poetry.
Scientific abstracts, academic essays, correspondence, etc. are usually
nonliterary. The essay is an interesting case because the first ones
were written as art pieces which were attempts or trials
to understand oneself, others, and the world. While this still is the
essence of the essay, they are now written largely for the ends of
education and disseminating information and are infrequently written to
stand alone as pieces of literature.
Poetry and prose are
further divided into fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is based on
characters, places, or events which exist only in the imagination.
Nonfiction is based on characters, places, and events which
have precedent in the world. Nonfiction is also that which deals purely
with ideas or information, such as the dictionary, the encyclopedia,
the philosophical or political treatise, etc. Poetry is often
fictional, especially when it contains narrative or dramatic elements.
Nonfictional poetry is usually of the meditative, satirical, or elegiac
genre. Fictional and nonfictional poetry and prose can be further
divided into various genres. Genres have something to do with the
content, structure, and style of the piece, but they may be so strictly
or loosely defined and are of such number that they exhaust one’s
ability to comprehensively categorize them. Since any given work may
belong to many genres at once, the task of classification is a very
difficult one indeed—though librarians somehow manage. Tragedy, comedy,
and tragicomedy are often spoken of as the overarching genres for every
dramatic ‘subgenre,’ but I am not sure if even this division is
completely exhaustive.
A digression concerning genre:
Perhaps
it is best to leave systematizing of this sort intentionally open-ended
with respect to genre. I like what Yeats had to say about this topic in
his book, The Celtic Twilight. He wrote, “What is literature
but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident? And
are there not moods which need heaven, hell, purgatory and faeryland
for their expression, no less than this dilapidated earth?” In this
definition of literature, genre and setting arise out of the need to
convey a certain mood. They are not placed into a work of literature
because they are merely interesting; that is the mark of nonliterary
“genre fiction.”
Excellence
It is also best not to be too systematic in defining
what constitutes literary merit. There are countless attempts to
define the quality that sets literature apart from the artless writing
produced every age in large amounts. One more attempt can’t hurt:
language becomes literature when it meets or exceeds a culture’s
expectations of excellence and is deemed worthy of remembrance by
people well-aware of the cultural tradition. While this is not a very
precise definition, we tend to think that the literary value of a work
cannot be determined quantitatively or algorithmically; indeed, these
judgments are ultimately based on the opinions of those who have
well-developed tastes, can place the work in relation to the
masterpieces that have come before, and can feel how the work resonates
with the spirit of the age. Today, these judgments are largely made by
literary critics. In the past, however, what was worth remembering may
have been connected with ritual, cultural identity, and cosmological
knowledge.
Presentation and aesthetic experience:
Having
discussed the basic elements of literature, we can better understand
how the work of literature is viewed. Literature is a unique form of
art in that it can have from almost no emphasis on public performance
to complete emphasis on public performance. Drama and the other stage
arts are rarely performed for an audience of one. Poetry, on the other
hand, may either be publicly recited before an audience or read in
private (some poems absolutely defy a public reading). Because of its
form, the novel is rarely read aloud to others, but there are some
exceptions. I have heard that a comedian named Andy Kaufman would
punish a heckling audience by reading aloud The Great Gatsby in its entirety, continuing even as the members of his audience left one by one.
Reading
or listening to a work of literature is different from viewing a
plastic work of art. Plastic art is immediately present. It is a
trivial thing to see the entirety of a painting or a sculpture at a
glance and then view, with more attention to detail, how each part
relates to the whole. With forms of art that reveal themselves in a
linear way (literature, music, film), one must either undertake
multiple viewings of a piece or view the piece once—slowly—with extreme
attention to the subtleties and details and with a period of reflective
evaluation afterward. John Dewey delineates a distinction between the
art product and the work of art. The work of art is the effect of the
piece in one’s mind and in society as a whole while the art product is
merely the tangible expression of the artwork. In the case of
literature, the art product is the book, manuscript, recited story,
etc. which holds an arrangement of words. Art is a co-creative process.
An author creates the novel which is the art product and is partly
responsible for creating the work of art, but the reader, bringing his
experiences to the piece, is also responsible for creating the work of
literature.