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Literature

Literature is literally "an acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary; the term has, however, generally come to identify a set of texts. The word "literature" spelled with a lower-case "l" can refer to any form of writing, such as essays; while "Literature" spelled with an upper-case "L" may refer to a whole body of literary work, world-wide or relating to a specific culture. Etymologically, the word literature comes from the Latin word "litera" meaning "a individual written character (letter)". Nations can have literatures, as can corporations, philosophical schools or historical periods. Popular idea commonly holds that the literature of a nation, for example, comprises the collection of texts which make it a whole nation.

Various Forms Of Literature:

Poetry:

A poem is a work of art usually written in verse. Poems rely heavily on imagery, precise word choice, and metaphor; they may take the form of measures consisting of patterns of stresses (metric feet) or of patterns of different-length syllables (as in classical prosody); and they may or may not make use of rhyme. One cannot readily characterise poetry precisely. Typically though, poetry as a form of literature makes some important use of the formal properties of the words it uses the properties attached to the written or spoken form of the words, rather than to their meaning. Metre depends on syllables and on rhythms of speech; rhyme and alliteration depend on words that have similar accent. Some recent poets, such as e. e. cummings, made extensive use of words' visual form.

Poetry perhaps pre-dates other forms of literature: Early known examples include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (dated from around 3000 B.C.), parts of the Bible, and the existing works of Homer (the Iliad and the Odyssey). In cultures based primarily on oral traditions the formal characteristics of poetry often have a mnemonic function, and important texts: legal, genealogical or moral, for example, may appear first in verse form.

the haiku, the limerick, or the sonnet, for example. A haiku must have seventeen syllables, distributed over three lines in groups of five, seven, and five, and should have an image of a season and something to do with nature. A limerick has five lines, with a rhyme scheme of AABBA, and line lengths of 3,3,2,2,3 stressed syllables. It usually has a less respectful attitude towards nature.

Greek poetry hardly ever rhymes, Italian or French poetry often does, English and German can go either way (although modern non-rhyming poetry often, perhaps unfairly, has a more "serious" aura). Perhaps the most classic style of English poetry, blank verse, as exemplified in works by Shakespeare and by Milton, consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters. Some languages prefer longer lines; some shorter ones. Some of these conventions result from the ease of fitting a specific language's vocabulary and grammar into certain structures, rather than into others; for example, some languages contain more rhyming words than others, or typically have longer words. Other structural conventions come about as the result of historical accidents, where many speakers of a language associate good poetry with a verse form favored by a particular skilled or well-liked poet.

Drama:

A play or drama offers another classical literary form that has continued to evolve over the years. It generally comprises chiefly dialogue between characters, and usually aims at dramatic / theatrical performance (see theatre) rather than at reading. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opera developed as a combination of poetry, drama, and music. Nearly all drama took verse form until relatively recently.

Greek drama exemplifies the earliest form of drama of which we have substantial knowledge. Tragedy, as a dramatic genre, developed as a performance associated with religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical or mythological themes. Tragedies generally presented very serious themes and treated important conflicts in human nature, but not necessarily "tragic" ones as currently understood meaning sad and without a happy ending. Greek comedy, as a dramatic genre, developed later than tragedy; Greek festivals eventually came to include three tragedies counterbalanced by a comedy or satyr play.

Modern theatre does not in general stick on to any of these limitations of form or theme. "Plays" cover anything written for performance by actors (screenplays, for example); and even some things not intended for performance: many up to date writers have taken advantage of the dialogue-centred character of plays as a way of presenting literary work intended simply for reading rather than performance.

Essays:

An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view, exemplified by works by Francis Bacon or by Charles Lamb. 'Essay' in English derives from the French 'essai', meaning 'attempt'. Thus one can find open-ended, provocative and/or inconclusive essays. The term "essays" first applied to the self-reflective musings of Michel de Montaigne, and even today he has a reputation as the father of this literary form.

Genres related to the essay may include:

• The memoir, telling the story of an author's life from the author's personal point of view
• The epistle: usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter.

Reading:

Reading is the process of retrieving and comprehending some form of stored information or ideas. These ideas are usually some sort of representation of language, as symbols to be examined by sight, or by touch (for example Braille). Other types of reading may not be language-based, such as music notation or pictograms. By analogy, in computer science, reading is acquiring of data from some sort of computer storage.

Reading by humans is mostly done from paper (a dysphemism for such an edition is "dead tree edition"), but other media are used, such as stamped stone, chalk on blackboard: anything that can hold a mark. More recently these include computer displays, television and other displays in devices such as mobile phones.

A requirement for (convenient) reading is a good dissimilarity between letters and background (depending on colors of letters and background, any pattern or image in the background, and on lighting) and a suitable font size. In the case of a computer screen, not having to roll horizontally is important. Human reading appears to be performed as a series of word recognition steps with saccades between them.

The process of recording information to be read later is writing. In the case of computer and microfiche storage there is the separate step of displaying the written text. For humans reading is usually faster and easier than writing. Reading is typically an individual activity, although on occasion a person will read out loud for the benefit of other listeners. Reading aloud for one's own use, for better comprehension, is a form of intrapersonal communication. Reading to young children is a optional way to instill language, expression, and to promote comprehension of text. Literacy is the capability to read and write; illiteracy is usually caused by not having had the opportunity to learn these. Apart from that, sufferers of dyslexia have difficulty reading and/or writing. About acquiring reading skill, see Reading education.

Learning to read in a language other than your native one, especially in adulthood, may be a rather different process from learning to read your native language in childhood. For this, see English as an additional language. Proofreading is a kind of reading for the purpose of detecting typographical errors. Reader's fatigue can sometimes come as a result of reading poorly written work.

Writing:

Writing is the process of recording characters on a medium, with the purpose of forming words and other larger language constructs. The instruments used for recording, and the medium on which the recording is done can be almost infinite, and can be done by any instrument capable of making marks on any surface that will accept them; writing has even been done at nearly the atomic level. Writing can be done even on a grain of rice. The durability is often very good, but very volatile is e.g. writing in the sand; writing on a blackboard is also for short-term use and often erased after some minutes or hours.

Writing is also often used to explain the craft of creating a larger work of literature. This is an extension of the original meaning, which would include the act of writing longer texts. Writing in this sense can refer to the production of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and letters.

Most of time, writing aims to produce works that are target of reading. Typically, however, one will use a writing utensil (such as a pen or pencil) to write characters on paper; or a computer (or typewriter) to record characters to disk, (electromagnetic tape, CD-ROM, or other computer medium on which information can be recorded). The use of pen and paper has historical primacy, and one could argue that the second is merely comparable to writing. Still, as commonly used, writing refers to recording visual characters on physical or electronic media.

Writing with the intent to communicate has been viewed spontaneously in non-humans. Work with the bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha in the United States has provided one such example. The examples which occur are very few, but the origin of bonobo "writing" seems to be analogous to the origin of human writing.

An exclusion to the general rule that writing is an attempt to communicate is the writing in unknown scripts or languages assumed by mediums to be communicated to them by ghosts, spirits, or other, generally supernatural or extraterrestrial entities. This technique is known as automatic writing.

Writing that blends meaning and transcription is called constrained writing. Sometimes writing is done in invisible ink that can be later decoded, if the message is intended to be secret and only for the recipient or recipients. Rarely, "writing" is used to refer to the making of marks using various methods, that is not, strictly speaking, writing, as in the "indecipherable writing" (a type of surautomatism) developed by the Romanian surrealists; "indecipherable writing" is actually more similar to what would commonly be described as drawing or painting than writing.