In the session Dr. Cordell asked everyone what we think of Literature. In my opinion, literature is stepping in an author world, and stepping into the character mind. Literature is allowing the readers to step outside their comfort zone. Dr. Cordell mention in the session historical novels vs literature. A historical novel tells the readers what’s happening, and how it happened. A historical novel is more based on someone else personal factors on the historical topic they are discussion. Literature is more about the complex issues of a text. Literature shows the beauty of writing.
When looking at a historical text for example, “Brown girl dreaming” is showing the time period of an African-American girl. The historical text from this novel
The debate of what literature is or how it should be defined is an ongoing battle even today. Many have expressed that literature should be well-written, worthy of study, and also stand the test of time, despite most of this criteria catering towards classical literature written by wealthy white men, while others believe this is all too subjective to work fairly. I personally believe that literature is at least three of the following: An embodiment of the human experience, a reflection of cultural perspective, and the relationship between author and reader.
Literature is not only important to society, but is very important for each individual to read and understand. Literature can provide a way for people to learn more about what happened in the past and can even be a way for people to reduce stress in their lives. There are many different types of literature and each of them can be used for different reasons. You can use books to study specific topics, to relive the past, and to express yourself through writing. Literature can be written about the past, the future and even about present day society. Even if the book or novel is fiction, it still has some sort of theme that resembles a real world experience or problem. We need literature in our lives to help us develop and improve, not only as individuals, but as a society and to learn about the past.
Literature, the dictionary defines it being the art of written works that is simultaneously designed to entertain, educate and instruct its audience; writers, using their skill of telling stories, use literature in an attempt to transfer their ideas from paper to the reader; for some, this task means bringing their story to a different place and time that is entirely separate from what the could be perceive as ordinary, on order to serve the writer’s intent. With this, the impossible, becomes the probable, and the worst fear imagined becomes the breathed reality; with no separation between the truth, and fiction. The word “literature” in itself cannot be accurately defined, and by attempting to do so, it limits the word not only in its
During this time period literature had a dominance of black women writers. Their writings focused on five major traits: dominance of black women writers, intertextuality, revisiting the past, reoccurrence of historiography, and broadening of horizons. Among the major writers only one was a male. The intertextuality circled around repeat writing, the response and revision of earlier themes and motifs. Each period adds to the existing one by utilizing new contexts to literature, themes and style.
The time period that the fiction sets is the 1920s, when the society was experiencing significant transformations in every aspect of life. The Progressive Movement, which aimed at eliminating various means of political corruption and illegal business practices, had just abated. Harlem Renaissance, a new element of the 1920s, took place in City of New York and its effect swept across the country. Harlem Renaissance, a rebirth of African American culture and art, exerted substantial influence on black people, regardless of the social status and wealth they had. Nevertheless, such splendid cultural explosion could not conceal the limitations and inequality of the 1920s. Gender and race restrictions were not uncommon across the nation. Based on her own experience as a mulatto, Nella Larsen showcased the struggling and miserable life of mixed-blood people.
Literatures work has always played an important role in our society throughout the history. Each works serves with different purposes and provide the readers with great benefits. It does not only give the audience enjoyments from the works, but it is also another way to teach the others in many different ways. Most work from the Native Americans that we learned from the lecture are to teach and persuade other people of strong values of life, such as “Iktomi and the Dancing Duck” and “Origin of the Sun Shower.” Literature is one of the most important ways to preserve wide range of knowledge and to pass down to each generation, which can also help the audience understand different things from the past. There are many literature works that were
Literature Matters “Who needs literature?” (Gillespie). Literature is a way to experience another world written on a sheet of paper. In the article “Why Community College Students Need Great Books, J.M. Anderson refers to literature as “a form of travel in time and space, allowing readers to experience vicariously what others have thought, felt, and even seen.” Experiencing literature takes the mind to another world and allows it to be free with imagination and creativity.
Society today reflects and is shaped by literature in many ways. By reading different works, readers can be influenced by different ideas. When a person is exposed to a variety of different ideas and concepts, they often times change the way that they think or go about daily life. For example, books like The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass gave people insight to what it was like to live a life of oppression, thus making people feel sympathetic for him. Society also reflects literature in that we see a lot of patterns repeated from books to everyday life.
After watching the video lecture for this week and reading Professor Glass’s viewpoint on the subject, I would have to agree more with Professor Glass. I believe literature is all around in today’s world. I see it a lot in television shows and movies. The deeper meaning of these shows and movies is where literature comes into place. The show may not have the happy ending I want, but that is what makes it literature.
Literature comes in all sizes. Literature doesn’t focus on a specific genre; it can be about anything from war, to violence, to race. Literature is made up of different histories from different eras with different writing styles. Literature is made of meaning and hidden messages. When you read literature, you will know it is literature because it’s about human experience. You have to read between the lines to decide what the hidden meaning is. Literature doesn’t explicitly tell us, instead uses our senses to reveal meaning. Literature deepens our thoughts. Literature evokes emotion, making us feel happy or sad about a specific event. We may feel sympathy for the characters. Literature really makes you feel like you’re actually in the
Though many people nowadays disregard the usefulness of literature in modern society I belong to the opposite sect of folk. Reading and literature is more than just words and writeing, its ways for the dead to speak and advise those to come through understanding of common feelings. Whether the author meant to mean something through metaphor or more literally is not important, what is important is that us as the readers are able to communicate and interpret needed information from the subject and author. Something that I sometimes think is lacking in todays society is not just this communictation but understanding. Furthermore reading it gives us a way to understand and invest in lives other than ourselves. Secondly reading and understanding what we read allows us to feel empathetic towards the subject thus allowing us to share our own story of feeling and ideas. This is
It is important for authors to research the lifestyles of people in the historical time frame in which their characters are living, especially in historical fiction. Finding information on the roles of all types of people, from females to males, parents to children and blacks to whites, during the time period of the story allows for the characters and the story to align. When the characters are authentic to the historical time period,
Literature has influenced society since its creation but history has also influenced literature since its creation. In America, literature started with the Native Indians with their oral stories passed down one generation at a time. The colonization of America from Europeans brought writing and new styles of literature. But as literature evolved the purpose for it never changed. People wrote literature in response to history to remember what they experienced and pass on how they grew from it.
I used to think that literature was the Classics and the books we were forced to read in school. I do not think that I am the only one who thought that (as shown in class discussions), but Archibald Hill addressed the same idea in his article: “… a given work before us is judged to be an example of literature by whether or not it shares observable characteristics with one of the institutionalized great books” (Hill 46). (“Institutionalized books” in this case means the respected Classics.) This definition of, for me, goes back into my senior year of high school with my AP Literature and Comprehension class. My teacher taught us at the beginning of the year about Aristotle’s Treatise of Poetics, and for the rest of the year and even during the final, had us relate the Treatise of Poetics to every book or piece of work that we read.
The definition of literature has been discussed and argued over time and there is no precise answer to be given. Any reader or author can define literature as whatever they wish it to be defined as. This is more of an opinion of how one views certain pieces of work or writings and whether or not they feel that is actually literature or not. Literature is any type of creative writing such as fiction or poetry, for example. Literature is also any form of body of written works of language, which could be from the English era or even as far back as the Shakespearean or Elizabethan era. It is also work from a specific period or culture defining key elements or somehow relating to and/or expressing how it is exactly from that time. The