LITERATURE

a body of written works. The name is often applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter. For historical treatment of various literatures, see the article Western literature and the articles African arts: Literature and theatre, Native American arts: Literature, Central Asian arts: Literature, Islamic arts: Islamic literatures, Oceanic arts: Literature, South Asian arts: Literature, and Southeast Asian arts: Literature. Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Celtic literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese literature, biblical literature). Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The Concise Oxford Dictionary says it is writings whose value lies in the beauty of form or emotional effect. The 19th century critic Walter Pater referred to the matter of imaginative or artistic literature as a transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms. But such definitions really assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, a letter of the alphabet, literature is first and foremost mankind's entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing. But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may rightly speak of oral literature or the literature of preliterate peoples. The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature is the organization of words to give pleasure; through them it elevates and transforms experience; through them it functions in society as a continuing symbolic criticism of values. Additional reading General works Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form, 2nd ed. (1967); I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment (1929, reprinted 1968) and Principles of Literary Criticism (1924, reprinted 1961); George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day, 3 vol. (190004, reprinted 1961); Nowell C. Smith (ed.), Literary Criticism (1905); Konstantin Kolenda, Philosophy in Literature (1982). Ancient to modern A Translation of the Latin Works of Dante Alighieri (1904), see Letter X to Can Grande; Charles Sears Baldwin, Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic, Interpreted from Representative Works (1924), Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic to 1400, Interpreted from Representative Works (1928, reprinted 1971), and Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice (1939); Edward H. Blakeney (ed.), Horace on the Art of Poetry (1928); Cecil Maurice Bowra, Primitive Song (1962); S.H. Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, with a critical text and translation of the Poetics, 4th ed. (1907; reprinted with corrections, 1932); Ingram Bywater, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry (1909), reprinted in Aristotle's Poetics and Longinus on the Sublime, ed. by Charles Sears Baldwin (1930); Pierre Corneille, Oeuvres, 3 vol. (1862), containing the Discourse on Dramatic Poetry and Discourse on the Three Unities; Albert S. Cook (ed.), The Art of Poetry (1892, reprinted 1926), containing a translation of Horace's Art of Poetry; J.D. Denniston, Greek Literary Criticism (1924, reprinted 1971), translations, beginning with Aristophanes; Dryden's Essays on the Drama, ed. by William Strunk (1898); Allan H. Gilbert (ed.), Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (1940); Edmund D. Jones (ed.), English Critical Essays (Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries) (1922); Ben Jonson: Timber, Discoveries, and Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden in his Works, ed. by C.H. Herford and Percy Simpson, 11 vol. (192552); Longinus, On the Sublime, Greek text with an English translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe (Loeb Classical Library, 1927); Plato, trans. by Lane Cooper (1938), contains the Phaedrus, the Symposium, the Ion, the Gorgias, and parts of the Republic and the Laws; George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. by Gladys D. Willcock and Alice Walker (1936); Paul Radin, Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927); Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie, ed. by J. Churton Collins (1907); G. Gregory Smith (ed.), Elizabethan Critical Essays, 2 vol. (1904); Gay Wilson Allen and H.H. Clark (eds.), Literary Criticism: Pope to Croce (1941 and 1962); Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism, 2 vol., First and Second Series complete (1902), and Essays in Criticism, with an introduction by E.J. O'Brien, Third Series (1910); Edwin Berry Burgum (ed.), The New Criticism: An Anthology of Modern Aesthetics and Literary Criticism (1930); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions, 2 vol., reprinted from the original plates (1907); Benedetto Croce, The Defence of Poetry, Variations on the Theme of Shelley, trans. by E.F. Carritt (1933); T.S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 19171932 (1932); Hazlitt on English Literature: An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature, ed. by Jacob Zeitlin (1913, reprinted 1970); E.R. Hughes (trans.), The Art of Letters: Lu Chi's Wen Fu, A.D. 302 Bollingen Series XXIX (1951); Thomas Ernest Hulme, Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art, ed. by Herbert Read (1924); James Gibbons Huneker, Essays (1929); Edmund D. Jones (ed.), English Critical Essays of the Nineteenth Century (1922); Phyllis M. Jones (ed.), English Critical Essays: Twentieth Century (1933); William Paton Ker, Collected Essays, 2 vol. (1925, reprinted 1968); Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Sur la littrature et l'art, ed. and trans. by Jean Freville (1936); H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949); Paul Elmer More, The Demon of the Absolute (1928) and Shelburne Essays, 11 series (190421); Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo and The Birth of Tragedy, trans. by Clifton Fadiman (1927); Horatio, Works, 10 vol. (1910); Georgy V. Plekhanov, Art and Society, trans. by Alfred Goldstein (1936), a Marxist analysis; Edgar Allan Poe, Selections from the Critical Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. with an introduction by F.C. Prescott (1909); Ezra Pound, ABC of Reading (1934) and Literary Essays (1954); Herbert Read, Reason and Romanticism (1926); Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, 15 vol. (185262; Eng. trans., 8 vol., 190911), contains What Is a Classic?. Shelley's Literary and Philosophical Criticism, ed. by John Shawcross (1909); Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?, trans. by Aylmar Maude (1932); Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. by Rose Strunsky (1925, reprinted 1957); Paul Valery, Littrature (1929) and Varit, trans. by Malcolm Cowley (1927); William Carlos Williams, In the American Grain (1925); Edmund Wilson, Axel's Castle (1931) and The Triple Thinkers, rev. ed. (1952 and 1963); Emile Zola, The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, trans. by Belle M. Sherman (1893). Contemporary Cecil Maurice Bowra, In General and Particular (1964); Stanley Burnshaw (ed.), The Poem Itself, rev. ed. (1967); Cyril Connolly, The Modern Movement (1965); Paul Goodman, The Structure of Literature (1954); Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964); R.E. Scholes and R.L. Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (1966); Herbert Read, The Nature of Literature (1956).