What is the definition of literature?

We often
hear people saying that a given work is not a literary work, or African literature
is not literature. The question that might come to one’s mind is: what is the
definition of literature?




Literature is derived from the Latin word
“letera” which means acquaintance of letters. Besides the etymology of the
word, many definitions have been given to explain this confusing concept.




Many have tried to define what literature
is, or what makes something literary. Some people use the term to describe any
kind of written form. This definition makes no sense for other people because
it leaves out the idea that there can be oral literature as well from which
many of the African stories and books came from. Because literature is a value
that keeps the spirit of age alive, and it is developed from an aesthetic dimension,
science (which is empty from any kind of aesthetical style) and history (that
gives just events from the past) are excluded. The latter fact weakens the
definition which says that literature is any kind of written form.




Another definition describes literature as
a term that refers to works of creative imagination including the work of
fiction. A work of fiction is a work of literature but the term “literature”
encompasses far more than just fiction. Literature also refers to non-fiction
like biographies, autobiographies, memories, and so on. In sum fiction is not a
helpful way to distinguish between what is literary and what is not. There are
a lot of facts in novels, and many novels are based on real historical events.


Literature is the art of the writer another
definition suggests. Art is everything beautiful, and the concept of beauty may
change from one person to another. What is beautiful for one person can be ugly
for other. The latter definition is so subjective because of that we cannot
depend on it in explaining what literature is.




Jacobson says that literature is an organized
violent committed on ordinary speech. Is there any rule that defines that? of course
not. What might be an ordinary speech for me can be an exaggerated one for you
and vice versa.




What I want to say is that there is no
definition of literature. Anything can
be literature.

Well my dear cookie, yes everything can be literature. Crap ( sorry for the word) can be literature since there is no exact definition one can follow to decide wether a given work is a literary work or not. I give you a humble example : The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was accused of being everything but a masterpiece. Other critics did not agree, and they explained that the daily speech used in that novel was the thing that made it a masterpiece since it reflected the reality of the era ( I hope that I have chosen a good example). Well, another example is the play of Hamlet written by Shakespeare. Who would dare to say that the play of Hamlet is a failure. Well, T S Eliot did. In an essay entitled Hamlet and His problems, T S Eliot explained that Hamlet is a failure because shakespeare failed to find an objective correlative. People disagree about a given novel, poem, or play because they have no rule to follow. So cookie, if someone tells you that a given work is not literature ask him what is literature first. well you can watch the movie of mona lisa smile to understand more.