| 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.
Much poetry uses
specific forms: 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.
Language and tradition dictate some poetic
norms: 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.
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