Category: Uncategorized

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems.^[1] It includes both print and digital writing.^[2] In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed.^[3][4] Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment. It can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

Literary criticism is one of the oldest academic disciplines, and is concerned with the literary merit or intellectual significance of specific texts. The study of books and other texts as artifacts or traditions is instead encompassed by textual criticism or the history of the book. “Literature”, as an art form, is sometimes used synonymously with literary fiction, fiction written with the goal of artistic merit,^[5][6] but can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoirs, letters, and essays. Within this broader definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles, or other written information on a particular subject.^[7][8]

Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, while the digital era had blurred the lines between online electronic literature and other forms of modern media.

Definitions

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Further information: Literary work

Definitions of literature have varied over time.^[9] In Western Europe, prior to the 18th century, literature denoted all books and writing. It can be seen as returning to older, more inclusive notions, so that cultural studies, for instance, include, in addition to canonical works, popular and minority genres. The word is also used in reference to non-written works: to “oral literature” and “the literature of preliterate culture”.^{[citation needed]}

Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura, “learning, writing, grammar,” originally “writing formed with letters,” from litera/littera, “letter.”^[10] In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts.^[11][12] Literature is often referred to synecdochically as “writing,” especially creative writing, and poetically as “the craft of writing” (or simply “the craft”). Syd Field described his discipline, screenwriting, as “a craft that occasionally rises to the level of art.”^[13]

A value judgment definition of literature considers it as consisting solely of high quality writing that forms part of the belles-lettres (“fine writing”) tradition.^[14] An example of this is in the 1910–1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which classified literature as “the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing”.^[15]

History

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Main article: History of literature

Oral literature

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Main article: Oral literature

See also: African literature § Oral literature

The use of the term “literature” here poses some issues due to its origins in the Latin littera, “letter,” essentially writing. Alternatives such as “oral forms” and “oral genres” have been suggested, but the word literature is widely used.^[4]

Australian Aboriginal culture has thrived on oral traditions and oral histories passed down through tens of thousands of years. In a study published in February 2020, new evidence showed that both Budj Bim and Tower Hill volcanoes erupted between 34,000 and 40,000 years ago.^[16] Significantly, this is a “minimum age constraint for human presence in Victoria“, and also could be interpreted as evidence for the oral histories of the Gunditjmara people, an Aboriginal Australian people of south-western Victoria, which tell of volcanic eruptions being some of the oldest oral traditions in existence.^[17] An axe found underneath volcanic ash in 1947 had already proven that humans inhabited the region before the eruption of Tower Hill.^[16]

Oral literature is an ancient human tradition found in “all corners of the world.”^[18] Modern archaeology has been unveiling evidence of the human efforts to preserve and transmit arts and knowledge that depended completely or partially on an oral tradition, across various cultures:

The Judeo-Christian Bible reveals its oral traditional roots; medieval European manuscripts are penned by performing scribes; geometric vases from archaic Greece mirror Homer’s oral style. (…) Indeed, if these final decades of the millennium have taught us anything, it must be that oral tradition never was the other we accused it of being; it never was the primitive, preliminary technology of communication we thought it to be. Rather, if the whole truth is told, oral tradition stands out as the single most dominant communicative technology of our species as both a historical fact and, in many areas still, a contemporary reality.^[18]

The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering history, genealogy, and law.^[19]

In Asia, the transmission of folklore, mythologies as well as scriptures in ancient India, in different Indian religions, was by oral tradition, preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques.^[20]

The early Buddhist texts are also generally believed to be of oral tradition, with the first by comparing inconsistencies in the transmitted versions of literature from various oral societies such as the Greek, Serbia and other cultures, then noting that the Vedic literature is too consistent and vast to have been composed and transmitted orally across generations, without being written down.^[21] According to Goody, the Vedic texts likely involved both a written and oral tradition, calling it a “parallel products of a literate society”.^[22]

All ancient Greek literature was to some degree oral in nature, and the earliest literature was completely so.^[23] Homer‘s epic poetry, states Michael Gagarin, was largely composed, performed and transmitted orally.^[24] As folklores and legends were performed in front of distant audiences, the singers would substitute the names in the stories with local characters or rulers to give the stories a local flavor and thus connect with the audience by making the historicity embedded in the oral tradition as unreliable.^[25] The lack of surviving texts about the Greek and Roman religious traditions have led scholars to presume that these were ritualistic and transmitted as oral traditions, but some scholars disagree that the complex rituals in the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations were an exclusive product of an oral tradition.^[26]

Writing systems are not known to have existed among Native North Americans (north of Mesoamerica) before contact with Europeans. Oral storytelling traditions flourished in a context without the use of writing to record and preserve history, scientific knowledge, and social practices.^[27] While some stories were told for amusement and leisure, most functioned as practical lessons from tribal experience applied to immediate moral, social, psychological, and environmental issues.^[28] Stories fuse fictional, supernatural, or otherwise exaggerated characters and circumstances with real emotions and morals as a means of teaching. Plots often reflect real life situations and may be aimed at particular people known by the story’s audience. In this way, social pressure could be exerted without directly causing embarrassment or social exclusion.^[29] For example, rather than yelling, Inuit parents might deter their children from wandering too close to the water’s edge by telling a story about a sea monster with a pouch for children within its reach.^[30]

The enduring significance of oral traditions is underscored in a systemic literature review on indigenous languages in South Africa, within the framework of contemporary linguistic challenges. Oral literature is crucial for cultural preservation, linguistic diversity, and social justice, as evidenced by the postcolonial struggles and ongoing initiatives to safeguard and promote South African indigenous languages.^[31]

Oratory

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Oratory or the art of public speaking was considered a literary art for a significant period of time.^[7] From ancient Greece to the late 19th century, rhetoric played a central role in Western education in training orators, lawyers, counselors, historians, statesmen, and poets.^{[32][note 1]}

Writing

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Further information: History of writing

Around the 4th millennium BC, the complexity of trade and administration in Mesopotamia outgrew human memory, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form.^[34] Though in both ancient Egypt and Mesoamerica, writing may have already emerged because of the need to record historical and environmental events. Subsequent innovations included more uniform, predictable legal systems, sacred texts, and the origins of modern practices of scientific inquiry and knowledge-consolidation, all largely reliant on portable and easily reproducible forms of writing.

Early written literature

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Main articles: History of literature, Ancient literature, and History of books

Ancient Egyptian literature,^[35] along with Sumerian literature, are considered the world’s oldest literatures.^[36] The primary genres of the literature of ancient Egypt—didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales—were written almost entirely in verse;^[37] By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created.^[38]

Many works of early periods, even in narrative form, had a covert moral or didactic purpose, such as the Sanskrit Panchatantra (200 BC – 300 AD), based on older oral tradition.^[39][40] Drama and satire also developed as urban cultures, which provided a larger public audience, and later readership for literary production. Lyric poetry (as opposed to epic poetry) was often the speciality of courts and aristocratic circles, particularly in East Asia where songs were collected by the Chinese aristocracy as poems, the most notable being the Shijing or Book of Songs (1046–c. 600 BC).^[41][42][43]

In ancient China, early literature was primarily focused on philosophy, historiography, military science, agriculture, and poetry. China, the origin of modern paper making and woodblock printing, produced the world’s first print cultures.^[44] Much of Chinese literature originates with the Hundred Schools of Thought period that occurred during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (769‒269 BC).^[45] The most important of these include the Classics of Confucianism, of Daoism, of Mohism, of Legalism, as well as works of military science (e.g. Sun Tzu‘s The Art of War, c. 5th century BC) and Chinese history (e.g. Sima Qian‘s Records of the Grand Historian, c. 94 BC). Ancient Chinese literature had a heavy emphasis on historiography, with often very detailed court records. An exemplary piece of narrative history of ancient China was the Zuo Zhuan, which was compiled no later than 389 BC, and attributed to the blind 5th-century BC historian Zuo Qiuming.^[46]

In ancient India, literature originated from stories that were originally orally transmitted. Early genres included drama, fables, sutras and epic poetry. Sanskrit literature begins with the Vedas, dating back to 1500–1000 BC, and continues with the Sanskrit Epics of Iron Age India.^[47][48] The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts. The Samhitas (vedic collections) date to roughly 1500–1000 BC, and the “circum-Vedic” texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000‒500 BC, resulting in a Vedic period, spanning the mid-2nd to mid-1st millennium BC, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age.^[49] The period between approximately the 6th to 1st centuries BC saw the composition and redaction of the two most influential Indian epics, the Mahabharata^[50][51] and the Ramayana,^[52] with subsequent redaction progressing down to the 4th century AD such as Ramcharitmanas.^[53]

The earliest known Greek writings are Mycenaean (c. 1600–1100 BC), written in the Linear B syllabary on clay tablets. These documents contain prosaic records largely concerned with trade (lists, inventories, receipts, etc.); no real literature has been discovered.^[54][55] Michael Ventris and John Chadwick, the original decipherers of Linear B, state that literature almost certainly existed in Mycenaean Greece,^[55] but it was either not written down or, if it was, it was on parchment or wooden tablets, which did not survive the destruction of the Mycenaean palaces in the twelfth century BC.^[55] Homer‘s epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are central works of ancient Greek literature. It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.^[56] Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[57][58][59] Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.^[60] From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been significant, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.^[61] The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who “has taught Greece” – ten Hellada pepaideuken.^[62][63] Hesiod‘s Works and Days (c.700 BC) and Theogony are some of the earliest and most influential works of ancient Greek literature. Classical Greek genres included philosophy, poetry, historiography, comedies and dramas. Plato (428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) authored philosophical texts that are regarded as the foundation of Western philosophy, Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC) and Pindar were influential lyric poets, and Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 BC) and Thucydides were early Greek historians. Although drama was popular in ancient Greece, of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors still exist: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The plays of Aristophanes (c. 446 – c. 386 BC) provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, the earliest form of Greek Comedy, and are in fact used to define the genre.^[64]

The Hebrew religious text, the Torah, is widely seen as a product of the Persian period (539–333 BC, probably 450–350 BC).^[65] This consensus echoes a traditional Jewish view which gives Ezra, the leader of the Jewish community on its return from Babylon, a pivotal role in its promulgation.^[66] This represents a major source of Christianity’s Bible, which has had a major influence on Western literature.^[67]

The beginning of Roman literature dates to 240 BC, when a Roman audience saw a Latin version of a Greek play.^[68] Literature in Latin would flourish for the next six centuries, and includes essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings.

The Qur’an (610 AD to 632 AD),^[69] the main holy book of Islam, had a significant influence on the Arab language, and marked the beginning of Islamic literature. Muslims believe it was transcribed in the Arabic dialect of the Quraysh, the tribe of Muhammad.^[29][70] As Islam spread, the Quran had the effect of unifying and standardizing Arabic.^[29]

Theological works in Latin were the dominant form of literature in Europe typically found in libraries during the Middle Ages. Western Vernacular literature includes the Poetic Edda and the sagas, or heroic epics, of Iceland, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and the German Song of Hildebrandt. A later form of medieval fiction was the romance, an adventurous and sometimes magical narrative with strong popular appeal.^[71]

Controversial, religious, political and instructional literature proliferated during the European Renaissance as a result of the Johannes Gutenberg‘s invention of the printing press^[72] around 1440, while the Medieval romance developed into the novel.^[73]

Publishing

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Publishing became possible with the invention of writing but became more practical with the invention of printing. Prior to printing, distributed works were copied manually, by scribes.

The Chinese inventor Bi Sheng made movable type of earthenware c. 1045 and was spread to Korea later. Around 1230, Koreans invented a metal type movable printing. East metal movable type was spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th century.^{[74][75][76][77]} In c. 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in Europe. This invention gradually made books less expensive to produce and more widely available.

Early printed books, single sheets, and images created before 1501 in Europe are known as incunables or incunabula. “A man born in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, could look back from his fiftieth year on a lifetime in which about eight million books had been printed, more perhaps than all the scribes of Europe had produced since Constantine founded his city in A.D. 330.”^[78]

Eventually, printing enabled other forms of publishing besides books. The history of newspaper publishing began in Germany in 1609, with the publishing of magazines following in 1663.

University discipline

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In England

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Main article: English studies

In late 1820s England, growing political and social awareness, “particularly among the utilitarians and Benthamites, promoted the possibility of including courses in English literary study in the newly formed London University“. This further developed into the idea of the study of literature being “the ideal carrier for the propagation of the humanist cultural myth of a well educated, culturally harmonious nation”.^[79]

America

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Main article: American literature (academic discipline)

Women and literature

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Further information: French literature, German literature, Russian literature, and English poetry § Women poets in the 18th century

The widespread education of women was not common until the nineteenth century, and because of this, literature until recently was mostly male dominated.^[80]

George Sand was an idea. She has a unique place in our age.
Others are great men … she was a great woman.

Victor Hugo, Les funérailles de George Sand^[81]

There were few English-language women poets whose names are remembered until the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century some notable individuals include Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Emily Dickinson (see American poetry). But while generally women are absent from the European canon of Romantic literature, there is one notable exception, the French novelist and memoirist Amantine Dupin (1804 – 1876) best known by her pen name George Sand.^[82][83] One of the more popular writers in Europe in her lifetime,^[84] being more renowned than both Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac in England in the 1830s and 1840s,^[85] Sand is recognised as one of the most notable writers of the European Romantic era. Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) is the first major English woman novelist, while Aphra Behn is an early female dramatist.

Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded between 1901 and 2020 to 117 individuals: 101 men and 16 women. Selma Lagerlöf (1858 – 1940) was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she was awarded in 1909. Additionally, she was the first woman to be granted a membership in The Swedish Academy in 1914.^[86]

Feminist scholars have since the twentieth century sought to expand the literary canon to include more women writers.

Children’s literature

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A separate genre of children’s literature only began to emerge in the eighteenth century, with the development of the concept of childhood.^{[88]: x–xi} The earliest of these books were educational books, books on conduct, and simple ABCs—often decorated with animals, plants, and anthropomorphic letters.^[89]

Study and criticism

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Main article: Literary criticism

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (November 2024)

Literary theory

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Further information: Literary theory and Philosophy and literature § The philosophy of literature

A fundamental question of literary theory is “what is literature?” – although many contemporary theorists and literary scholars believe either that “literature” cannot be defined or that it can refer to any use of language.^[90]

Literary fiction

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Further information: Western canon § Literary canon

Literary fiction is a term used to describe fiction that explores any facet of the human condition, and may involve social commentary. It is often regarded as having more artistic merit than genre fiction, especially the most commercially oriented types, but this has been contested in recent years, with the serious study of genre fiction within universities.^[91]

The following, by the British author William Boyd on the short story, might be applied to all prose fiction:

[short stories] seem to answer something very deep in our nature as if, for the duration of its telling, something special has been created, some essence of our experience extrapolated, some temporary sense has been made of our common, turbulent journey towards the grave and oblivion.^[92]

The very best in literature is annually recognized by the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is awarded to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, produced “in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction” (original Swedish: den som inom litteraturen har producerat det mest framstående verket i en idealisk riktning).^[93][94]

The value of imaginative literature

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Some researchers suggest that literary fiction can play a role in an individual’s psychological development.^[95] Psychologists have also been using literature as a therapeutic tool.^[96][97] Psychologist Hogan argues for the value of the time and emotion that a person devotes to understanding a character’s situation in literature;^[98] that it can unite a large community by provoking universal emotions, as well as allowing readers access to different cultures, and new emotional experiences.^[99] One study, for example, suggested that the presence of familiar cultural values in literary texts played an important impact on the performance of minority students.^[100]

Psychologist Maslow’s ideas help literary critics understand how characters in literature reflect their personal culture and the history.^[101] The theory suggests that literature helps an individual’s struggle for self-fulfillment.^[102][103]

Aesthetic value

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Further information: Aesthetic judgment and Value judgment

The influence of religious texts

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Further information: Islamic literature and King James Version § Influence

Religion has had a major influence on literature, through works like the Vedas, the Torah, the Bible,^[104] and the Quran.^{[105][106][107]}

The King James Version of the Bible has been called “the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language”, “the most important book in English religion and culture”, and “arguably the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world,”^[108] principally because of its literary style and widespread distribution. Prominent atheist figures such as the late Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have praised the King James Version as being “a giant step in the maturing of English literature” and “a great work of literature”, respectively, with Dawkins adding: “A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian”.^[109][110]

Societies in which preaching has great importance, and those in which religious structures and authorities have a near-monopoly of reading and writing and/or a censorship role (as, for example, in the European Middle Ages), may impart a religious gloss^{[clarification needed]} to much of the literature those societies produce or retain. The traditions of close study of religious texts has furthered the development of techniques and theories in literary studies.^{[citation needed]}

Types

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Poetry

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Main article: Poetry

Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from prose by its greater use of the aesthetic qualities of language, including musical devices such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm, and by being set in lines and verses rather than paragraphs, and more recently its use of other typographical elements.^{[111][112][113]} This distinction is complicated by various hybrid forms such as digital poetry, sound poetry, concrete poetry and prose poem,^[114] and more generally by the fact that prose possesses rhythm.^[115] Abram Lipsky refers to it as an “open secret” that “prose is not distinguished from poetry by lack of rhythm”.^[116]

Prior to the 19th century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set in metrical lines: “any kind of subject consisting of Rhythm or Verses”.^[111] Possibly as a result of Aristotle‘s influence (his Poetics), “poetry” before the 19th century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art.^{[clarification needed][117]} As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition;^[118][119] hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.

Prose

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Main article: Prose

As noted above, prose generally makes far less use of the aesthetic qualities of language than poetry.^{[112][113][120]} However, developments in modern literature, including free verse and prose poetry have tended to blur the differences, and poet T.S. Eliot suggested that while “the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure”.^[121] There are verse novels, a type of narrative poetry in which a novel-length narrative is told through the medium of poetry rather than prose. Eugene Onegin (1831) by Alexander Pushkin is the most famous example.^[122]

On the historical development of prose, Richard Graff notes that, in the case of ancient Greece, “recent scholarship has emphasized the fact that formal prose was a comparatively late development, an ‘invention’ properly associated with the classical period“.^[123]

Latin was a major influence on the development of prose in many European countries. Especially important was the great Roman orator Cicero.^[124] It was the lingua franca among literate Europeans until quite recent times, and the great works of Descartes (1596 – 1650), Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), and Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) were published in Latin. Among the last important books written primarily in Latin prose were the works of Swedenborg (d. 1772), Linnaeus (d. 1778), Euler (d. 1783), Gauss (d. 1855), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727).

Novel

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Main article: Novel

See also: Genre fiction and Hypertext fiction

A novel is a long fictional narrative, usually written in prose. In English, the term emerged from the Romance languages in the late 15th century, with the meaning of “news”; it came to indicate something new, without a distinction between fact or fiction.^[125] The romance is a closely related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as “a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents”, whereas in the novel “the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society”.^[126] Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: “a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo“,^[127] indicates the proximity of the forms.^[128]

Although there are many historical prototypes, so-called “novels before the novel”,^[129] the modern novel form emerges late in cultural history—roughly during the eighteenth century.^[130] Initially subject to much criticism, the novel has acquired a dominant position amongst literary forms, both popularly and critically.^{[128][131][132]}

Novella

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Main article: Novella

The publisher Melville House classifies the novella as “too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story”.^[133] Publishers and literary award societies typically consider a novella to be between 17,000 and 40,000 words.^[134]

Short story

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Main article: Short story

A dilemma in defining the “short story” as a literary form is how to, or whether one should, distinguish it from any short narrative and its contested origin,^[135] that include the Bible, and Edgar Allan Poe.^[136]

Graphic novel

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Main article: Graphic novel

Graphic novels and comic books present stories told in a combination of artwork, dialogue, and text.

Electronic literature

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Electronic literature is a literary genre consisting of works created exclusively on and for digital devices.

Non-fiction

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Common literary examples of non-fiction include, the essay; travel literature; biography, autobiography and memoir; journalism; letter; diary; history, philosophy, economics; scientific, nature, and technical writings.^[8][137]

Non-fiction can fall within the broad category of literature as “any collection of written work”, but some works fall within the narrower definition “by virtue of the excellence of their writing, their originality and their general aesthetic and artistic merits”.^[138]

Drama

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Drama is literature intended for performance.^[139] The form is combined with music and dance in opera and musical theatre (see libretto). A play is a written dramatic work by a playwright that is intended for performance in a theatre; it comprises chiefly dialogue between characters. A closet drama, by contrast, is written to be read rather than to be performed; the meaning of which can be realized fully on the page.^[140] Nearly all drama took verse form until comparatively recently.

The earliest form of which there exists substantial knowledge is Greek drama. This developed as a performance associated with religious and civic festivals, typically enacting or developing upon well-known historical, or mythological themes,

In the twentieth century, scripts written for non-stage media have been added to this form, including radio, television and film.

Law

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Law and literature

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The law and literature movement focuses on the interdisciplinary connection between law and literature.

Copyright

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Further information: History of copyright

Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.^{[141][142][143][144][145]} The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.^{[146][147][148]}

United Kingdom

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Literary works have been protected by copyright law from unauthorized reproduction since at least 1710.^[149] Literary works are defined by copyright law to mean “any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or sung, and accordingly includes (a) a table or compilation (other than a database), (b) a computer program, (c) preparatory design material for a computer program, and (d) a database.”^[150]

Literary works are all works of literature; that is all works expressed in print or writing (other than dramatic or musical works).^[151]

United States

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The copyright law of the United States has a long and complicated history, dating back to colonial times. It was established as federal law with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act was updated many times, including a major revision in 1976.

European Union

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The copyright law of the European Union is the copyright law applicable within the European Union. Copyright law is largely harmonized in the Union, although country to country differences exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their national law. The main copyright directives are the Copyright Term Directive, the Information Society Directive and the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. Copyright in the Union is furthermore dependent on international conventions to which the European Union is a member (such as the TRIPS Agreement and conventions to which all Member States are parties (such as the Berne Convention)).

Copyright in communist countries

[edit]

Further information: Copyright in Russia, Copyright law of the Soviet Union, and Intellectual property in China

Copyright in Japan

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Japan was a party to the original Berne convention in 1899, so its copyright law is in sync with most international regulations. The convention protected copyrighted works for 50 years after the author’s death (or 50 years after publication for unknown authors and corporations). However, in 2004 Japan extended the copyright term to 70 years for cinematographic works. At the end of 2018, as a result of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, the 70-year term was applied to all works.^[152] This new term is not applied retroactively; works that had entered the public domain between 1999 and 2018 by expiration would remain in the public domain.

Censorship

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Further information: Book censorship, Theatre censorship, and Film censorship

Censorship of literature is employed by states, religious organizations, educational institutions, etc., to control what can be portrayed, spoken, performed, or written.^[153] Generally such bodies attempt to ban works for political reasons, or because they deal with other controversial matters such as race, or sex.^[154]

A notable example of censorship is James Joyce‘s novel Ulysses, which has been described by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov as a “divine work of art” and the greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose.^[155] It was banned in the United States from 1921 until 1933 on the grounds of obscenity. Nowadays it is a central literary text in English literature courses, throughout the world.^[156]

Awards

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There are numerous awards recognizing achievements and contributions in literature. Given the diversity of the field, awards are typically limited in scope, usually on: form, genre, language, nationality and output (e.g. for first-time writers or debut novels).^[157]

The Nobel Prize in Literature was one of the six Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895,^[158] and is awarded to an author on the basis of their body of work, rather than to, or for, a particular work itself.^{[note 2]} Other literary prizes for which all nationalities are eligible include: the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the Man Booker International Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Hugo Award, Guardian First Book Award and the Franz Kafka Prize.

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources (although, under circumstances unpublished sources can be exempt). The two major classification of literature are poetry and prose. Others exclude all genres such as romance, crime and mystery, science fiction, horror and fantasy.

The theory of dominant group with respect to literature falls into at least two situations: a dominant group of literature or a dominant group associated with literature.

Dominant group

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Main resource: Dominant group

Examples from primary sources are to be used to prove or disprove each hypothesis. These can be collected per subject or in general.

• Accident hypothesis: dominant group is an accident of whatever processes are operating.

Main resource: Dominant group/Accident laboratory

• Artifact hypothesis: dominant group may be an artifact of human endeavor or may have preceded humanity.

Main resource: Dominant group/Artifact laboratory

• Association hypothesis: dominant group is associated in some way with the original research.

Main resource: Dominant group/Association laboratory

• Bad group hypothesis: dominant group is the group that engages in discrimination, abuse, punishment, and additional criminal activity against other groups. It often has an unfair advantage and uses it to express monopolistic practices.

Main resource: Dominant group/Bad group laboratory

• Control group hypothesis: there is a control group that can be used to study dominant group.
• Entity hypothesis: dominant group is an entity within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
• Evolution hypothesis: dominant group is a product of evolutionary processes, such groups are the evolutionary process, produce evolutionary processes, or are independent of evolutionary processes.
• Identifier hypothesis: dominant group is an identifier used by primary source authors of original research to identify an observation in the process of analysis.
• Importance hypothesis: dominant group signifies original research results that usually need to be explained by theory and interpretation of experiments.
• Indicator hypothesis: dominant group may be an indicator of something as yet not understood by the primary author of original research.
• Influence hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article containing original research to indicate influence or an influential phenomenon.
• Interest hypothesis: dominant group is a theoretical entity used by scholarly authors of primary sources for phenomena of interest.
• Metadefinition hypothesis: all uses of dominant group by all primary source authors of original research are included in the metadefinition for dominant group.
• Null hypothesis: there is no significant or special meaning of dominant group in any sentence or figure caption in any refereed journal article.
• Object hypothesis: dominant group is an object within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.

Main resource: Null hypothesis

• Obvious hypothesis: the only meaning of dominant group is the one found in Mosby’s Medical Dictionary.
• Original research hypothesis: dominant group is included in a primary source article by the author to indicate that the article contains original research.
• Primordial hypothesis: dominant group is a primordial concept inherent to humans such that every language or other form of communication no matter how old or whether extinct, on the verge of extinction, or not, has at least a synonym for dominant group.
• Purpose hypothesis: dominant group is written into articles by authors for a purpose.
• Regional hypothesis: dominant group, when it occurs, is only a manifestation of the limitations within a region. Variation of those limitations may result in the loss of a dominant group with the eventual appearance of a new one or none at all.
• Source hypothesis: dominant group is a source within each field where a primary author of original research uses the term.
• Term hypothesis: dominant group is a significant term that may require a ‘rigorous definition’ or application and verification of an empirical definition.

Literature

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Def. “the body of [all] written work”^[1] is called literature.

The theory of literature involves methods of studying and investigating literature, its “nature and function”; “literary theory, criticism, and history; and general, comparative, and national literature.”^[2]

Def. “[t]he theory or the philosophy of the interpretation of literature and literary criticism”^[3] is called literary theory.

Writings

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His bringing “writing center practice into line with the authorized knowledge about writing, and his widely followed stricture that tutors are to support the classroom teacher’s position completely is clear evidence of how writing centers do not escape domination. Yet one of the benefits of being excluded from the dominant group is that in this position one has less to protect and less to lose.”^[4]

Abstractions

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Def.

1. a “separation from worldly objects”,^[5]
2. “the withdrawal from one’s senses”,^[6]
3. the “act of focusing on one characteristic of an object rather than the object as a whole group of characteristics;^[7] the act of separating said qualities from the object or ideas”,^[6]
4. the “act of comparing commonality between distinct objects and organizing using those similarities;^[7] the act of generalizing characteristics; the product of said generalization”,^[6]
5. an “idea of an unrealistic or visionary nature”,^[6] or
6. any “generalization technique that ignores or hides details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances for the purpose of controlling the intellectual complexity of engineered systems, particularly software systems”^[8]

is called an abstraction.

The image on the right is an example of the literature of abstraction.

Adventures

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Adventure fiction is a genre of fiction in which an adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, forms the main storyline.

“An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist’s ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work.”^[9]

Comedies

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“Thus, the use of stereotypes in popular fictional forms such as situation comedies may be rather less unambiguously a reflection of dominant group views than Dyer suggests.”^[10]

“Mean scores for number of Smile and Laughter responses in telic and paratelic state-dominant groups throughout six successive 100 sec periods during exposure to comedy.”^[11]

“Yet the situation of women is more complex because of their close involvement with members of the dominant group, which has blurred the boundaries between “us” and “them.””^[12]

Comparative literature

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“Without doubt, multiculturalism is preferable to the monoculturalist oppression of minorities by the dominant group.”^[13]

Criticism

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Def. “[t]he study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature”^[14] is called literary criticism.

“But my point is that one constant within this struggle remains: that an oppositional culture of non-dominant groups has to define itself against the practices and ideology of the dominant group (or groups), and this inevitably has consequences for form. Indeed, only a very unsophisticated literary criticism could conceive of form and content as distinct entities.”^[15]

Compositions

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A newspaper, or online, feature article is composed of the following:

1. a lede,
2. topic sentence,
3. a body, and an
4. ending.^[16]

The ratio of each of these may depend on the audience. In an inverted pyramid style the ratios are about 5:3:2 for lead (including topic sentence), body, and ending.

There is also what’s called a “news-peg” or “hook”, something that will interest a reader, usually the first sentence or the title.

The following elements should be present: What, When, Where, Why, Who, and How. Nearly all of these elements must appear somewhere in the story.

Crimes

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“Accounts of true crime have always been enormously popular among readers. The subgenre would seem to appeal to the highly educated as well as the barely educated, to women and men equally. The most famous chronicler of true crime trials in English history is the amateur criminologist William Roughead, a Scots lawyer who between 1889 and 1949 attended every murder trial of significance held in the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and wrote of them in essays published first in such journals as The Juridical Review and subsequently collected in best-selling books with such titles as Malice Domestic, The Evil That Men Do, What Is Your Verdict?, In Queer Street, Rogues Walk Here, Knave’s Looking Glass, Mainly Murder, Murder and More Murder, Nothing But Murder, and many more…. Roughead’s influence was enormous, and since his time “true crime” has become a crowded, flourishing field, though few writers of distinction have been drawn to it.”^[17]

Debates

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Main resource: Debates

Def. “a type of literary composition, taking the form of a discussion or disputation”^[18] is called debate.

“On the other hand, it served to maintain the Moluccans’ challenge of and resistance to the dominant group’s definitions. These examples indicate that it is important to examine the actual use of the notion of ‘essentialism’ in argument and debate.”^[19] Debate occurs in public meetings, academic institutions, and legislative assemblies.^[20]

Debating is also carried out for educational and recreational purposes, usually associated with educational establishments and debating societies.^[21]

Debating topics covered a broad spectrum of topics while the debating societies allowed participants from both genders and all social backgrounds, making them an excellent example of the enlarged public sphere of the Age of Enlightenment.^[22] Debating societies were a phenomenon associated with the simultaneous rise of the public sphere,^[23] a sphere of discussion separate from traditional authorities and accessible to all people that acted as a platform for criticism and the development of new ideas and philosophy.^[24]

John Henley, a clergyman,^[25] founded an Oratory in 1726 with the principal purpose of “reforming the manner in which such public presentations should be performed.”^[26] He made extensive use of the print industry to advertise the events of his Oratory, making it an omnipresent part of the London public sphere. Henley was also instrumental in constructing the space of the debating club: he added two platforms to his room in the Newport district of London to allow for the staging of debates, and structured the entrances to allow for the collection of admission. These changes were further implemented when Henley moved his enterprise to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The public was now willing to pay to be entertained, and Henley exploited this increasing commercialization of British society.^[27] By the 1770s, debating societies were firmly established in London society.^[28]

Dramas

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Def. “[a] composition, normally in prose, telling a story and intended to be represented by actors impersonating the characters and speaking the dialogue”^[29] is called a drama.

“Through the sape, there develops what James Scott (1990), in his brilliant essay on resistance strategies in subcultures, calls “hidden transcripts”-a series of disguised messages and attitudes representing a hidden critique of the dominant group’s authority.”^[30]

“Whatever multiplicity of expectations the public may have prior to their first experience with the drama, this system of signs tends to reduce them towards a sameness which conforms with the dominant group’s notion of social and artistic “validity” as incorporated into the theater design.”^[31]

“On the one hand, a theatre seen as part of the unfolding social revolution involves theatre as a catalyst and a pusher in new directions which may not (in this case) represent the interests of an elite or dominant group.”^[32]

Engineering

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Main resource: Engineering

Def. the “application of [mathematics and the physical sciences]^[33] to the needs of humanity^[34] and the development of technology”^[33] is called engineering

On the right, as an example of engineering literature, is a cover image of the MuMETAL catalog where engineers, metal suppliers and fabricators have referred to mumetal as the industry standard.

Eroticas

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Def. literature “relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement”^[35] is called erotic literature, or erotica.

On the left is a cover image from the new erotica e-book by Elizabeth Black called “PURR a Puss ‘n Boots Twisted Tale”.

“Here, for a fleeting moment (or occasionally even an entire evening), the existing social/sexual/economic power arrangements are challenged, where the client (who under “normal” circumstances has membership among the hegemonic, socially rewarding, dominant group of sexually conforming elites) temporarily crosses over the dichotomized chasm into the other world, and seeks temporary acceptance among those representing sexually challenging, alternative, erotic communities.”^[36]

Essays

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Def. “[a] written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject”^[37] is called an essay.

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author’s personal point of view.

Fantases

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Def. a “literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and [fictive]^[38] medieval technology”^[39] is called fantasy.

Fictions

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Def. a “[l]iterary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts,^[40] usually written as prose”^[41] is called fiction.

Geography

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Main resource: Geography

At the right is an allegorical painting in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, 1915.

It is one among many connected to the literature of the time preceded by a long and baroque heritage expressed even in the final years of the nineteenth century in various regions and in art and culture.

On the left is a form of geographic literature consisting of a geographic map showing the locations of Turkic peoples in and around Xinjiang, formerly East Turkestan.

History

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Main resource: History

Def. “[a] [written] record or narrative description of past events”^[42] is called history.

On the right is an illustration of the “Hof van Beselare” in Flanders, Belgium, from the history book, Flandria Illustrata by Antoon Sanders.

Horrors

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Def. a “genre of fiction, meant to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense”^[43] is called horror.

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror specifically and exclusively focuses on and publishes current horror fictional literature.

“And like non-disabled women, they have a darker side; they are evil, depraved. They function as symbolic scapegoats for the dominant group, and hence the latter may feel horror and disgust and avert their eyes-or stare.”^[44]

Humanities

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Main resource: Humanities

On the right is a graph of Digital Humanities Twitter users with 1,434 nodes and 137,061 directed edges that each symbolize a user following another user.

Humor

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Def. the “quality of being amusing, comical, funny”^[45] is called humor, or humour.

Intellects

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Def. “the faculty of thinking, judging, abstract reasoning, and conceptual understanding;^[46] the cognitive faculty”^[47] is called an intellect.

Laws

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Def. “[a] written or understood rule that concerns behaviors and the appropriate consequences thereof”^[48] is called law.

Literary history

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“To justify the existence and the methods of literary history is entirely superfluous nowadays, and it is no less superfluous to dwell upon the differences and likenesses between it and literary criticism. Our common sense tells us, if we do away with prejudices and futile scholarly discussions, that literary history, working in its own field, is trying neither to replace nor to oppose literary criticism. Literary history thinks that it can help literary criticism; can clear a path for it; can lighten its task of understanding, judging, and classifying literary works and the great movements of human thought. It offers its services as a devoted auxiliary, modest and self-effacing. It has no imperialistic designs: it covers enough territory already to have no need to encroach on that of a neighbor. It prepares the material for the critic but puts no restrictions on the way [she] should use it. If he has faith in impressionistic criticism, if [she] believes that the literary critic should surrender himself to the emotion produced by the book [she] is studying and then should express this emotion with precision and delicacy, he is free to do so. Literary history asks [her] only to base his personal reaction on facts that have been historically verified, to define [her] position clearly, and, when communicating a purely personal reaction to the public, not to believe or to make others believe that he is giving any added information about the work or its writer. “Impressionism”, says Lanson, “is the only method that puts us in touch with beauty. Let us, then, use it for this purpose, frankly, but let us limit it to this, rigorously. To distinguish knowing from felling, what we may know from what we should feel; to avoid feeling when we can know, and thinking that we know when we feel: to this, it seems to me, the scientific method of literary history can be reduced.”¹“^[49]

Sweden

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The Rök runestone is considered the first piece of written Swedish literature and thus it marks the beginning of the history of Swedish literature.^[50][51]

It was proposed that the inscription has nothing at all to do with the recording of heroic sagas and that it contains riddles which refer only to the making of the stone itself.^[52][53]

The Rök runestone inscription is not connected to heroic deeds in war. Instead it deals with the conflict between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death.^[54]

“The Rök runestone from central middle Sweden, [is] dated to around 800 CE […] Combining perspectives and findings from semiotics, philology, archaeology, and history of religion, the study presents a completely new interpretation which follows a unified theme, showing how the monument can be understood in the socio-cultural and religious context of early Viking Age Scandinavia. The inscription consists, according to the pro­posed interpretation, of nine enigmatic questions. Five of the questions con­cern the sun, and four of them, it is argued, ask about issues related to the god Odin. A central finding is that there are relevant parallels to the inscription in early Scandinavian poetry, especially in the Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál.”^[54]

Mysteries

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Def. a “suspenseful, sensational genre of story, book, play or film”^[55], such as a “detective story, mystery novel, whodunit, crime fiction”, is called a thriller.

“The scripts for the series [I Love a Mystery] were usually themed towards the dark and supernatural, with perhaps the most famous, or infamous (depending on your point of view) scenario being “Temple of the Vampires,” which aroused a great deal of censorial comment when first broadcast as a twenty-episode serial from January 22 through February 16, 1940.”^[56]

From the Mysteries of the Human Journey, Hegemony: “The persuasion of subordinates to accept the ideology of the dominant group by mutual accommodations that nevertheless preserve the rulers’ privileged position.”^[57]

Narratives

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Def. “the systematic recitation of an event or series of events”^[58] is called a narrative.

A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events.

Further, the word “story” may be used as a synonym of “narrative”, but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative. An important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative through a process narration.

Natural sciences

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Def. a written work “studying phenomena or laws of the physical world”^[59] is called natural science.

Novels

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“Their experience is encoded in the dominant culture as that of exotic Other, “foreigners,” as Ralph Connor revealingly titled his novel of immigration in the appropriate(d) discourse. This dominant group has framed the grounds for discussion of a “national literature.””^[60]

“This point is crucial to understanding Donald’s internalized racism and the novel’s resistance to it: the dominant group obtains the consent of the subordinated group not by compulsion but by seduction.”^[61]

“There is another distinction to be made in considering the Afro-American novel. Baker speaks of experiences in which the dominant group overtly discriminates against the black society and unabashedly allows distinctions that prove its superiority.”^[62]

Philosophies

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Main resource: Philosophy

Def. a written work “that seeks truth through reasoning rather than empiricism”^[63] is called philosophy.

“The Tengrism tangraïsme or sometimes (in Mongolian: Тэнгэр шүтлэг, Tenger shütleg, worship (or religion) of heaven) was the major belief of Xiongnu and Xianbei which consisted of the Turkish population, Mongolian, Hungarian and Bulgarian in antiquity. It focuses around the divinity of the eternal sky Tengri (also transliterated Tangri, Tanrı, Tangra, etc.), and incorporates elements of shamanism, animism, totemism and ancestor worship.”^{[64][65][66][67]} Translated using Google Translate.

That a text of this philosophy, or religion, probably existed is suggested by the stamp on the left used by Güyük Khan, in a letter of 1246.

Plays

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Def. “[a] literary composition, intended to be represented by actors impersonating the characters and speaking the dialogue”^[68] or “a theatrical performance^[69] featuring actors”^[70] is called a play.

Poems

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Main resource: Poems

Def. a literary piece written in verse”^[71] is called a poem.

Poetrys

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“Only those aspects of the minority culture that overlap the dominant culture are recognized by the dominant group.”^[72]

“Their attitudes toward historical fact are complicated, but not because they are a muted group within a dominant group.”^[73]

“It began with a rejection of the dominant group and a recognition of acceptance of blackness. In the enumeration and praising of black qualities, it reached its height in an “unfolding” common to both black American and black African poetry.”^[74]

Romances

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The “popularity of old-fashioned romance novels featuring conventional and traditional gender roles seems to defy the stances of the modern-day women’s liberation movement.”^[75]

A romance novel might be characterized as a “hyper-romantic, contrived and extremely unrealistic tales of handsome, manly heroes falling in love with virginal women, enduring a series of adventures, then inexorably ending in a happy resolution.”^[75]

“Romance novels offer an escape from daily life with the belief that true love really exists.”^[76]

“Romance novels [portrayed by the partial cover image on the right] are at once the most scorned and popular form of literature in the world, accounting for as much as 40% of total book sales in much of the world. The average romance reader (and writer) is female, ambitious, leads a very full and busy life, and has an above-average education and intelligence. The livelihood of some of the world’s most critically-acclaimed (mostly male) authors depends on the revenue base generated from the sale of the remarkably diverse genre called ‘romance’, written by and bought overwhelmingly by women.”^[77]

Science fictions

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Def.’ “[f]iction in which advanced technology and/or science is a key element”^[78] is called science fiction.

“Nerds also collect objects connected with knowledge (atlases and maps; mathematical and scientific equipment such as telescopes and slide rules; etc.), and are avid science fiction fans. … While they arguably represent a privileged and dominant group, many must reconcile this status with their experience of themselves as relatively powerless, or even subjugated, in their everyday lives.”^[79]

“All the participants in a dominant culture do not necessarily belong to a dominant group. … This liquidation is the principal subject of Lovecraft’s opus, as I tried to show in “Entre le Fantastique et la Science-Fiction, Lovecraft,” Cahiers de l’Herne No. 12 (1969).”^[80]

“When groups see themselves as opposed, competing for the same resources, subordinate groups may view the dominant group as cold, exploiting, cruel, and arrogant. … This is the case in the example at the end of this article, where-it is argued that “Aliens” in recent science fiction films are—among other things—figures for actual historical aliens who enter US borders, legally or illegally.”^[81]