In any conversation, the participants need to share an understanding of the “thing” being discussed. If, for example, we’re going to talk about the film The Big Lebowski, we’d need to both agree that when we use the title of that movie, we’re referring to the 1998 film starring Jeff Bridges and John Goodman and written and directed by the Cohen brothers. If this were a course in cellular biology, we’d need to share a definition of a “cell” (what it is; what it isn’t; what its defining characteristics and behaviors are, etc) in order to talk meaningfully about it. If this were a course in business ethics, we’d have to share a definition of “ethics” (and “business”). Our conversations this semester will be about "literature" and about "critical inquiry," and so we need to have some shared understanding of what we mean and what we don’t mean when we use those terms. The purpose of the discussion here is to help us start our conversation about the meaning of the term "literature."
A safe place to begin when discussing definitions is a dictionary. Dictionary.com defines literature, in part, as follows:
"writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays."
That seems to make enough sense, and it represents a common definition of literature found in most dictionaries. But as all dictionaries do, Dictionary.com goes on to offer more definitions, one of which is this:
"any kind of printed material, as circulars, leaflets, or handbills."
This problematizes our discussion a bit: is “literature” anything printed (like advertisements and financial aid pamphlets and the CR course schedule) or is "literature" only particular kinds of printed material (like poems and short stories and plays). It won’t work for us to take a relativistic path and say simply that “literature is whatever each person thinks it is.” If we do that, then we won’t really be able to have a conversation about literature since you may be using the word to refer to poems and I may be using it to refer to my “to-do” list or to coupons in the newspaper. We don’t have to agree exactly on every aspect of our definition, but we do need to be in the same general area together. So for our discussions this semester, let’s agree that when we refer to “literature,” we ARE NOT referring to just “any kind of printed material” but only certain kinds of printed material—specifically, the kinds that possess some kind of artistic merit.
Well, now I’ve really complicated things. Defining “literature” seems easier than defining “artistic merit.” After all, what is “art”? Again, it simply won’t work to take the relativistic path and say that it is whatever each individual thinks it is. If anything qualifies as “art,” then everything qualifies as “art,” and, consequently, nothing is really “art.” And art isn’t simply what I like. There are many things I like immensely that don’t qualify as “art” (Backpacker magazine, for example), and there is much art that I can’t stand (for example, almost all of the poetry of Robert Frost). So what is “artistic merit”? Here it may be helpful to go back to part of our Dictionary.com definition of literature:
"…expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features."
What does this really mean? I understand it to mean first that a work we call "literature" says something (i.e. the "expression") about issues, experiences, or ideas that are of intense, ongoing interest to many, many people (i.e. the "ideas of permanent and universal interest"). Furthermore, a work we call "literature," will not simply address topics we care about and are interested in; it will address these topics in special ways. That is, the "form" of the expression or how the expression is presented somehow contributes to the uniqueness of the work. To break it down further, let's look at three elements of this definition.
1. "...connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest." Since people create ideas and give them permanence and universal interest, we can paraphrase this part of our definition to mean that literature addresses topics that are of deep interest to many, many people. What are these topics? Probably the things that make our lives both complicated and worth living--freedom, truth, beauty, love, loyalty, despair, hope, hopelessness, etc.. Contemplative people across places and throughout time have concerned themselves with these ideas and have represented and explored them through literature. It is this that caused American poet Ezra Pound to describe literature as “news that stays news” and American historian Barbara Tuchman to describe it as “humanity in print” and a “carrier of civilization.”
2. Furthermore, our definition of literature above implies that what a work of literature says about an issue or subject of deep interest is important. It’s not a particular opinion we’re looking for in literature; we're looking for insight into the topic that is of "permanent and universal interest." A “literary” text is one that freshens, intensifies, deepens, and/or challenges our understanding of something we are interested in. Literature should “rock” us, shake us up, rattle us, and make us feel like we understand something new about what it means to be human and experience the world we live in. Nature writer Annie Dillard described it this way:
"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? . . . . Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?"
Franz Kafka was more blunt:
"If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?… What we must have are those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves….A book must be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea inside us.