literatureWord下载.docx

1、 Yearbooks Tables Online Search View Table of Contents Notes ViewerMinimize ToolbarMaximize Toolbar Find Print Save Bookmark Preferences Take a Note Show Notes Hide NotesIntroductiona body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distin

2、guished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter.For historical treatment of various literatures with

3、in geographical regions, see such articles as African literature; African theatre; Oceanic literature; Western literature; Central Asian arts; South Asian arts; and Southeast Asian arts. Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject （e.g., Arabic literature, C

4、eltic literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese literature, and biblical literature）.Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of form or expression and exp

5、ressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But such definitions assume that the reader already knows what liter

6、ature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankinds entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pi

7、eces of writing.But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they a

8、re there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both critic

9、izing and affirming cultural values.Ed.The scope of literatureLiterature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed in wordseven when organized and written downis counted as literature. Those writings that are primarily informativetechnical, scholarly, journalisticwould be excluded

10、from the rank of literature by most, though not all, critics. Certain forms of writing, however, are universally regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Individual attempts within these forms are said to succeed if they possess something called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The n

11、ature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific exposition might be of great literary value and a pedestrian poem of none at all.The purest （or, at least, the most intense） literary form is the lyric poe

12、m, and after it comes elegiac, epic, dramatic, narrative, and expository verse. Most theories of literary criticism base themselves on an analysis of poetry, because the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not cal

13、led poetry at all but verse. Many novelscertainly all the worlds great novelsare literature, but there are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered literature （although the Chinese, possessors of one of the worlds greatest dramatic traditions, consider their plays, with

14、 few exceptions, to possess no literary merit whatsoever）.The Greeks thought of history as one of the seven arts, inspired by a goddess, the muse Clio. All of the worlds classic surveys of history can stand as noble examples of the art of literature, but most historical works and studies today are n

15、ot written primarily with literary excellence in mind, though they may possess it, as it were, by accident.The essay was once written deliberately as a piece of literature: its subject matter was of comparatively minor importance. Today most essays are written as expository, informative journalism,

16、although there are still essayists in the great tradition who think of themselves as artists. Now, as in the past, some of the greatest essayists are critics of literature, drama, and the arts.Some personal documents （autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and letters） rank among the worlds greatest literature. Some examples of