Day 255: What is Literature?

A professor asked this question, and this is what I came up with.

      I brainstormed with a couple classmates, and we decided that in traditional literature, such as books, everything a character says is purposeful.  The author has meaning behind the events that happen, and often there are literary techniques employed, such as foreshadowing, metaphors, themes, and conflict.  There is also a wide range genre of literature, such as horror and fantasy.  Comic books could be considered literature because they possess the same literary techniques that books have.  For example, comic books follow a plot.  Not all works of literature are meant to be fictional.  Nonfiction memoirs can have these literary devices as well.  Finally, we believe that literature was meant to entertain the audience.

     On the other hand, non-literature tends to be more factual and contains more casual words.  Such examples would be newspapers, internet articles or social media websites, and dialogue in TV shows.  These words are spoken.  Non-literary works can also spread knowledge and contain history.

     After thinking about more examples of literature and non-literary works, I have concluded that literature is any written group of words that took effort to create and have inspired someone.  It can contain literary devices, since this has already been established as an attribute to literature, but it does not have to.  A TV script can be considered literature because someone took the time to create it, and it contains literary devices such as a plot and characters.  If the script gets acted out, then it changes into something else because it is now voiced.  Other examples could be freewriting, poems, the phone book, a science report, and an encyclopedia.  If someone has read any of these things and has activated his imagination or been emotionally affected, then that means that body of words was viewed as significant enough to get his attention.  This definition could also mean that determining if something is literature could be relative to each person’s opinions.  What is literature to one person may not be simply a cluster of words strung along with no meaning.