So, umm…

…what is “Literature,” anyway?

Some (imperfect) ways of defining “lit”

• “Imaginative” writing

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

--from An Essay on Criticism (1711)

(Pope’s “Essay” is actually a long poem in heroic couplets consisting of epigrammatic advice for aspiring writers. Great literature, he says, displays the Renaissance virtue of “wit.”)

Some (imperfect) ways of defining “lit”

• “Imaginative” writing• Writing that uses language in extra-ordinary

ways

John Keats (1795-1821)

Thou still unravished bride of quietness!Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flow'ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

--opening lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820)

Literature—or not?"We want two Anis del Toro." "With water? " "Do you want it with water?" "I don't know," the girl said. "Is it good with water?" "It's all right." "You want them with water?" asked the woman. "Yes, with water." "It tastes like licorice," the girl said and put the glass down.

Moss No. What do you mean? Have I talked to him about this [Pause]Aaronow Yes. I mean are you actually talking about this, or are we just...Moss No, we're just...Aaronow We're just "talking" about it.Moss We're just speaking about it. [Pause] As an idea.Aaronow As an idea.Moss Yes.Aaronow We're not actually talking about it.Moss No.

—from Ernest Hemingway, "Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)

—from David Mamet, Glengarry, Glen Ross (1984)

Daily Variety July 17, 1935

Seen on the London Underground:

Some (imperfect) ways of defining “lit”

• “Imaginative” writing• Writing that uses language in extra-ordinary

ways• Writing whose meaning is non-pragmatic,

exceeds its face value, has broader significance, requires interpretation

Some (imperfect) ways of defining “lit”

• “Imaginative” writing• Writing that uses language in extra-ordinary

ways• Writing whose meaning is non-pragmatic,

exceeds its face value, has broader significance, requires interpretation

• Writing that gets treated as lit

Some (imperfect) ways of defining “lit”

• “Imaginative” writing• Writing that uses language in extra-ordinary

ways• Writing whose meaning is non-pragmatic,

exceeds its face value, has broader significance, requires interpretation

• Writing that gets treated as lit…which is to say, writing that is valued highly.

Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country.…We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues.…I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education. The claims of our own language [English] it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the west. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature….It may safely be said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together….

--from the “Minute on Indian Education” (1835)

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

[T]hose are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative power of genius, when there is a national glow of life and thought [and] beauty…..Only it must be real thought and real beauty….Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious and political organisations give an example of this way of working on the masses….[C]ulture works differently….It seeks…to make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere….The great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time….

--from Culture and Anarchy (1882)

MLA (founded 1883)

So why bother with“lit” at all?

• The rhetorical function of literature

So why bother with“lit” at all?

• The rhetorical function of literature• The sociological aspects of literature

So why bother with“lit” at all?

• The rhetorical function of literature• The sociological aspects of literature• The ideological implications of literature

So why bother with“lit” at all?

• The rhetorical function of literature• The sociological aspects of literature• The ideological implications of literature• And yes, the aesthetic pleasures of literature