This article will talk about what literature is, what are its main features, types and genres.
Definition of the term
Everyone knows what literature is. In a broad sense, this is the totality of all texts ever written by man. But more often than not, literature refers to a form of art whose main task is to write works of art. However, this is too narrow an understanding of the term. Literature is journalistic, scientific, philosophical, religious. The educated contemporaries of Homer, for example, with equal pleasure read out Virgil's Aeneid and Lucretius's treatise On the Nature of Things. And critics in 1820 recognized N. Turgenev's “Experience in Tax Theory” and N. Karamzin's “History of the Russian State” as the best examples of Russian prose. Both of these works in the modern sense do not belong to literary texts , but this does not prevent them from remaining masterpieces.
The concept of "Literature" has several properties that have remained unchanged for many years.
Authorship
Literature is considered only copyrighted texts. They can be anonymous (created by an unknown author) or collective (written by a specific group of people). This point is important because the presence of the author provides the text with completeness. A person puts an end to and thereby determines the boundaries of the created work, which from now on will live on its own. The situation is different, for example, with folklore texts. Any person can add something to him from himself, make changes, compose details. And no one in the world can put a signature on this work. What is literature? This is a text that belongs to a specific author.
Written text
Literature refers only to written texts. Oral creativity has nothing to do with this type of art. Folklore has always been passed from word of mouth, it can be fixed on paper, but it will be just the author’s version of a non-literary text. In the modern world there are exceptions to this rule, the so-called transitional cases. They exist in the national cultures of those peoples for which, with the advent of writing, storytellers still exist, whose work, created orally, is immediately subjected to written fixation. Such texts are considered literary. Thus, we come to a broader understanding of what literature is. This is a written text created by a specific author.
Word usage
Literary texts are texts that are created using the words of the human language. These do not include syncretic and synthetic texts in which the verbal component cannot be disconnected from the visual, musical or any other. Opera or song is not a piece of literature. However, in our time it often happens that music and words in a work are created by the same author. It is difficult to say how legitimate it is to consider literature, for example, Vysotsky’s verses for his own songs. On the other hand, the Saint-Exupery fairy tale “The Little Prince” is also not easy to call an exclusively literary work due to the fact that the author's illustrations to the text play an important role in it.
Social value
In order to finally come to an understanding of what literature is, we must consider one more criterion. It refers no longer to the structure of the text, but to its function. Literary works are considered records of social importance, that is, school essays, personal diaries, official correspondence are not related to literature. This rule has exceptions. If letters or diaries are written by a significant author (writer, scientist, politician, etc.) and shed light on his creative activity, then over time they receive the status of a literary work. For example, Sergei Yesenin’s diary has long been in the public domain and is published along with other works of the poet.
Main types
Literature can be fiction, documentary, memoir, scientific or popular science, as well as educational, technical and reference. Fiction, unlike its other types, has a pronounced aesthetic orientation. By means of fiction, the author seeks to convey his conclusions to the reader, and sometimes just to entertain him.
Even in antiquity, the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his "Poetics" divided all the works into three kinds: drama, lyrics and epic. Many genres passed into later European literature: novel, elegy, satire, ode, poem, tragedy, comedy. The drama appeared only in the XVIII century. The genre development of literature never stops. In the modern world, we read detective stories, science fiction, thrillers, action films, "horrors" and other interesting books. Literature these days is distributed not only on paper, but also through computer files on electronic media.
Russian literature
Literature was of great importance for the socio-political life of Russia. In a state where an enlightened society could not freely express their ideas and thoughts, this type of art became a kind of outlet. For example, in the 19th century, the Russian language and literature were forced journalistic in nature. The most widely read authors were documentary filmmakers and journalists. The critic V. G. Belinsky, who has not composed a single novel, novel or play in his life, has become a famous and highly readable writer.
As soon as the absolute power of the leader or monarch in Russia somehow turned out to be limited, the country announced the "great end of literature" (V.V. Rozanov). So it was in 1910, when the parliamentary monarchy first appeared in Russia , the country experienced something similar in 1990, after the collapse of the USSR.
Russian classical literature is one of the most interesting and readable in the world. L. Tolstoy, N. Gogol, A. Pushkin, F. Dostoevsky - recognized masters of the word of art.