Literature: What is it?

Oh Mighty Google, show me what Literature is!

A year or two ago, one of my English professors on the first day of class asked a very interesting question: what is literature? Here we were, a bunch of English majors with quite a few English courses under our belts yet failed to give literature an adequate definition. Sure, you can look in the dictionary where you'll find three different meanings, each growing broader ("leaflets and other printed matter used to advertise products or give advice." Okay that is pretty much anything written for public consumption). Yet for something so slippery, we as society value this word. You are either a English major with emphasis in creative writing or in literature. When shopping at Barnes and Nobles you pass the Romance, Young Adult, Graphic Comic and the Literature section. If you're seen reading something by the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Fitzgerald, they assume you're reading something literary.

It's just, weird.

One thing I do know about literature is that literature isn't written, it's made. Readers and critics alike decide what falls under "literary" and what gets shelved under a more precise genre shelf (aka the cafeteria). Sometimes it's instantly. Others, it takes time. Harry Potter forever was under the children's section. It still is--but you can also find it with the literary fiction along with other classical stuff today. The Road which came out in 2006, was instantly in literary fiction, but more so because Cormac McCarthy already had made quite an impression in the Literary world and let's not forget that nice gold P sticker stamped on the front. "Collect 200 and pass GO" said the majority of the readers, and so that book when straight on the literary shelf.

So what the hell am I blabbering about? What is your point Caitlin!?!?

My point, dear reader, is I spend a lot of time reading what people qualify as literature and desiring what is not "literary."

Currently reading:

• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

What I want to read but can't because I have literally no time:

• Rebel Angels by Libba Bray.

What I feel like doing at the moment:

At least I got SOME writing done. But sadly, not as much as the previous week.

WORD COUNT: 892