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Author Topic: What is Literature??
SoaPiNuReYe
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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe.

You know, the book about the Nigerian villager? I have to read it for 10th grade English and I frankly don't see the point in the book at all. Personally I think this book belongs on the same shelf as Great Expectations as worst book of all time. Can someone explain to me why English teachers always choose the worst books for us to write essays and do projects on? The book started off pretty cool actually, it was just the main character was so dislikable that I had trouble reading. I liked the way the story was told it was just that the story was so bad it couldn't hold my attention.

The ending was especially confusing, mostly because it happened rather sudden. I reread Part 3 of the book atleast 3 times and I still am not sure why this book is considered literature. There was no 'loss of innocence' in the book. Nothing grand happened at all, except for a guy hanging himself...

What am I missing?

What is the definition of Literature, and why is literature so bad? I'm sure it's not all bad, but really, what makes a book great, or in this case Literature. I've read several good books, yet none of them seem to be classified as literature [Frown] . Is it a requirement that the book has to be old? If so, how old?

Sorry for the rant but after a 10 page essay, I think I'm entitled to one [Frown]

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James Tiberius Kirk
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quote:
I'm sure it's not all bad, but really, what makes a book great, or in this case Literature.
In the interests of figuring this one out -- you say you've read good books that weren't "literature." What did you like about them?

--j_k

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Orincoro
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"Loss of innocence" is not a prerequisite factor in making something literature- who told you that one? What they were probably talking about was "catharsis," which is a concept dating back to Aristotle's "Poetics," and before, which basically means that the reader/viewer/listener is uplifted or washed clean or exposed by the reading, and so it has a positive effect, whatever the content.

That being said, the catharsis that comes from a story, even a story that has no apparent "moral," or specific agenda, can manifest in any way imaginable. I find that if I have seen or heard or read something, and I continue to think about it and remember it long afterward, that essentially my brain is picking at it for days and days after, that there was something in it that interested me and caused some kind of change.

Literature can be uncomfortable, or difficult and challenging, but that does not make it bad. The points you made were that the books assigned were boring, and confusing; that may be true enough. The thing is, like anything in life, what feels good all the time is not always good for you. You may find, and obviously some people have found, that these books or other old books that seem "boring" to you now can become powerful sources of insight when time is invested. Whether you want to make the time commitment, the emotional and intellectual effort to read the books carefully is totally up to you. Unfortunately, some really good works of literature get left behind because their language is just too boring, or their style is too antiquated, or their subject matter is hoplessly outdated. Others are preserved in advocacy, but I want to stress that advocacy saved the music of J.S. Bach from the snatches of dead history. He is now regarded as one of the three greatest musical minds who ever lived, but at one time his work was not even circulated outside of libraries, so advocacy can do really, really, important things. The thing is, for all the books and poets and authors and composers that are advocated for today, only a few are really worth it to anyone, and even less to you personally.

The reason books studied in class are so old? Because it takes time for a book to be recognized as being good, even more for people to have read it widely, and even more for teachers to know it well enough (having read it in their youths as well). Also, older books are generally better fodder for discussion because discussion has already been going on for many years, so teachers have alot of other people's insights to look into, as well as a host of newer works which have been affected by the older one. The older a work is, it either becomes less important or more important. A book like, say, "The Catcher in the Rye" is important for many reasons, but one of them is the simple fact that it has already been read by so many people, and it has had an effect on the way they think.

When and if you study literature at a university or college, you will have more than enough chances to brave the world of new literature and new music in an academic setting. This is certainly a completely different experience for the artist/writer to have. New works are untried, often unfinished, and undigested by the culture, so that they appear strange and sometimes incomprehensible to listeners. It is a true story that people rioted at the premier of "Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky, and even that prestigious composers scoffed at the dissonant yet achingly lovely style of Mozart in his string quartets. Another famous composer of his time told him frankly that his music contained "too many pretty inventions, so that the beauty of each motive is wasted by the next." At one time, believe it or not, Mozart was seriously considered TOO BEAUTIFUL! Of course, if people had stuck to that reaction, we wouldn't have gone in the direction we did as a culture after his life. There is no-one to say the direction we would have taken would have been better or worse, but failing to acknowledge his influence, or the influence of any famous and respected writer would be missing out on some fascinating stuff.

Ok what is Literature? I think it's anything remains complete in itself in the face of cultural reactions to it. For instance: I don't think that what Allen Ginsberg wrote was literature, because the culture that evolved from his work drowned him out of the public consciousness; his style or genre was too heavy or superficial to allow it to maintain itself after his work was done- it was an empire that did not outlast him. On the other hand, I don't consider the works of Homer to be literature in some ways. Certainly they HAVE stood the test of time, but also every element of their character has been subsumed in our culture, so as to make them background peices, recognizable as being ancient ancestors of nearly any imaginable modern work. They therefore have lost some kind of quality, some power that once made them interesting has now made them dead as interesting reading. Perhaps I am wrong about that, but every facet of Homer's work has been explored and extolled for 3 thousand years, so that there is truly nothing left to be discovered in them. We're in the process of doing that (continually, as our own culture adjusts itself) with people like Shakespeare, or Bach, or even Orson Scott Card. If a voice is so weak that it dies immediately after being heard, then it is probably not literature- but if it finds any way to survive, even advocacy of a small few, then it may be considered literature simple for being powerful enough to endure.

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Stephan
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Be glad you are being challenged. Somehow I got stuck in lower level reading classes all throughout school. Books I read in high school, my wife was made to read in middle school.
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Shmuel
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Much as a language is a dialect with an army, literature is a book or story on a syllabus. [Wink]
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