On literature

pp. 163-199

in: Robert Wood, Nature, artforms, and the world around us, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstrakt

This chapter examines how, before writing, the themes that literature would later take up were matters of oral tradition and their rhapsodic mediation. Both presuppose the nature of language. Writing presupposes speech as its basis. It moves from narration of actual events into fiction and into fantasy and also into technical treatment of various regions of experience. Literature is distinguished by style, so that even the writing of history can be literary. Among the various genres of literature, poetry draws upon connotations and sound patterning. The novel is the latest to emerge and is able to contain all the other forms within its ambit. From a comparison of various works there emerges criticism and the endurance of canonical texts as coping stones. In a focus upon particular works, Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov is presented as an example of the novel and Blake's "Eternity" as an example of poetry.