Lecture 1 - What is Literature

• all literature is text but not all texts are literature

• The difference between text (organized system of signs) and literature is that text is neutral while literature is a concept

• Text is the biggest category, which can be everything with carrying meaning, which is not only words on a page (Paintings, comics, fashion, etc.)

• literature exists between the text and the reader (the reader is engaging with the text)

• literature as a specific form of text (what kind of criteria is necessary to be considered literature)

• people agreeing on a subjective opinion due to shared ideologies

• relation or intersection between people's cognitive perspectives.

• It needs a group of people who define what literature is

• intention of the author is not the meaning of the text

• Distinguish between the intention of the author and the possible meaning of the text (meaning is important)

• Text and author are never the same thing (limits the lens when you only focus on the background information while reading, as they are only second information and not first-hand)

• 1967

• author is irrelevant (the birth of the reader is the death of the author)

• its language that speaks not the author

• construct from Roland Barthes

• Most important, influential, or definitive works in art, literature, music, and philosophy

• books you should have read in your lifetime (part of the society, public opinion, educational system

• e.g., good literature defined by the majority who are most likely to be white people which results in the point that back in the days afro American literature is not part of the Literary Canon)

• Normative Canon (The Classics Literacy Studies)

• Descriptive Canon (What we read - Cultural studies)

• text is put into context for the interpretation

• Interpretation as a form of interaction

• Using symbols in order of interpreting texts and understanding (reading through a framework and interacting with the text)

1. Initial understanding of the text (context à text)

2. New understanding of the text (depends on the century of the written text, gender theories, Marxism theories, race theories, etc.)

3. New context and reading become easier due to (historical) context changes

• bad writing vs. conscience way

• (e.g. can't write good sentences vs. want to make a statement very clear by repeating things over and over within a sentence (they arrived one after the other in succession)

exaggerate (It took me like forever to get here)

• It is sometimes easier to illustrate an abstract concept by analogy

• (comparison of two pairs with the same relationship) with something concrete (e.g. “Life is like a box of chocolates—you never know what you're going to get.”)

• sourroundings of the text

• The title, the author's name, cover art, a synopsis, pull quotes from authors, or those little award badges

• Author is an important criterium when it comes to analyzing the meaning

• Organized violence committed on ordinary speech

• Literature is based on the estrangement of language, concerned with the form rather than the content

• Relationship between texts, especially literary ones

• Rewrite a story of an author  

  
  

• Meaning comes from the structure of the language (it's the language that speaks not the author)

• Texts don't have an intention (authors might have one)

• Question of the author is relevant (book about black women written by white men)

• Emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object

• Focused their attention on the variety and degree of certain literary devices, specifically metaphor, irony, tension, and paradox (text itsef)

• Close reading to engage with a text (pays close attention to the interactions between form and meaning)

• Death of the author (birth of the reader) can be problematic (paratext needs the concept of the author to talk about literature)

• The author is also important when it comes to publishing the book to make  money out of it (the author has the rights)

•  Concept of the author≠the person of the author

• Organized system of meaning-making (creates meaning)

• A set of ideas that you all understand

• Can change over time

• Focused on things that are acceptable or less acceptable

• Eagleton comments on different approaches of defining literariness

• Eagleton did not invent these approaches nor does he claim that literature can be defined

• He distinguishes between the objective vs subjective criteria

• objective as the main points and subjective criteria as the main problems with it

  Objective criteria	Subjective criteria
  Creative + imaginative writing (imaginative stories - fiction vs reality)	No constant set of inherent features
  Use of a particular kind of a language (invented language such as spells)	Literature is a result of how people read
  Non - pragmatic (not ment to be political)	Something somebody values highly (Good literature)
  Essentialism approach	Constructivism approach

  
  

  —> Implies that non-imaginative texts are not literature such as science, history, philosophy, etc.

  —>Referring to our definition of literature it can be said that there is literature with realistic texts

  —>Implies that there must be a universal norm of language

  —> Referring to language itself it can be said that language is a complex system, therefore someone’s norm can be someone’s formation of new words from an original word (derivation)

  —>Referring to history it can be said that books were burned or strictly forbidden to read

  
  

• there is no clear cut definition of literature

• As a conclusion he points out that literature is not objective but also not entirely subjective (a mixture of both) and that literature is what you make it to be —> intersubjectivity