What exactly is literature?

, good books clearly belong to the broad field of art, and good authors are considered by these people to be true artists. As always, in the realm of literary art, a closer examination of the subject helps to gain a better understanding of quality.

We would like to accompany the path to this better understanding, which should mainly be paved with the pleasant activity of continuous reading, with a small series on the theory of German literature Kunstplaza – more with suggestions for reflection than through dry scientific consideration:

What is literature?

The first question that arises here is probably what literature actually is. Literary scholars themselves have already had a great deal to say about classifying the term in their research: The term itself comes from the Latin littera, meaning "letter." In the plural, "litterae" already an established term in antiquity to refer to documents, written works of science, and letters.

While it can be assumed that the content of these letters was more substantial than a Twitter message, an echo of this meaning can still be felt in English and French, where the “man of letters” or “homme de lettres” today refers to a literary and active person.

A little earlier, the “man of letters” simply the learned man, because until the 18th century people spoke of the res publica litteraria (literaria), the “republic of scholars”, an expression that encompassed the entire international scientific community, in English the “republic of letters”.

This res publica literaria encompassed all scholarly authors who maintained a lively exchange through letters, the only medium available at the time. Which brings us back to the litterae, the learned letters, which could be written by anyone with considerable knowledge, regardless of their social standing. Back then, teachers and students lived in a republic of equals, distinguished from the usual form of government, the stratified monarchy, by its very subject matter.

This elitist, highly educated, res publica literaria gradually dissolved as printed works became increasingly widespread. Their general availability quickly ended the restriction to scholarly content, and with the content itself, the meaning of the term "literature" fundamentally changed.

The following video is intended to provide an introduction to the concept of genre and an initial overview of the concept of literature:

Why do we need literature?

How long has literature existed? Why do we need it? And what motivates people to write literary texts? This video from alpha Lernen explores these questions.

Literary and non-literary texts

What are literary texts and what distinguishes them from non-literary texts? Another video from alpha Lernen provides the answers:

How literature became literature

What would be reported here would actually be a history of the spread of the art of printing , which from the 15th century onwards set the pace for its progress. To recount the entire triumph would be far too comprehensive; the definition considered here is actually more concerned with the breaks in this triumph.

For printing had to endure many setbacks. Not only did its technical development suffer significant setbacks during the numerous wars of the 17th century, but the content also suffered greatly. The more people who could read printed works, the more questionable content was included in books for purely sales-driven reasons, and in the 17th century, a kind of war literature even emerged – with products of the most vile kind, intended to distract people from the equally vile realities of the present.

The German versions of this horror literature have their origins in a German cultural asset, namely the popular writings, histories handed down since the Middle Ages, which were passed on from generation to generation as folk tales, fairytale anecdotes and legends and romantic adventures.

These local events, love songs and chivalric poems, which were worth preserving, had previously been passed down in easily digestible rhymed form; in the books they now received their popular prose version, which enabled printed distribution.

Johann Gottfried von Herder and Joseph Görres coined the term "Volksbuch" (chapbook) for this lower market segment of early printed books, which was unified neither by specific subject matter nor by a uniform origin; these chapbooks only resembled each other in their sensationalist design. Their significance for redefining the concept of literature was considerable, however—in terms of quality, they represented perhaps the greatest possible contrast to the earlier content of "literature."

Belles Lettres , as the books published predominantly in France from the 17th century onwards were called, which occupied the intellectual space between scholarly literature and unpretentious popular books, were somewhat more reminiscent of the previous concept of literature

In Germany, works of this kind were initially called Belles Lettres, but subsequently went through a whole series of names, just as the concept of literature as a whole underwent a whole series of changes.

Around the middle of the 19th century, a uniform definition of literature emerged: The term literature was now used to refer to all fictional and poetic works of the nation.

Thus, the term Belles Lettres was free again and from that point on was used by the Germans for the products of the international market of popular books; in the 20th century, it became our Belletristik .

If this narrower concept of literature (which initially always included the adjective "beautiful") now encompassed all texts in which language is shaped within the context of artistic freedom, then suddenly there was no longer a designation in Germany for the original "literary", the learned texts, which do not allow artistic freedom.

To close this gap, a two-part concept of literature emerged in our country during the remainder of the 19th century, according to which literature in the broadest sense encompasses all written language traditions, and literature in the narrower sense refers to “literary works of art”.

Literature is free – also in its interpretation

If you now believe you have a general idea of ​​what German literature actually is, you are certainly correct in its basic outlines. However, you should always be aware that the work of literary scholars, who themselves emerged as a distinct genre with the redefinition of the term, only begins here: Literature can be broken down into languages ​​and nations, grouped into literary genres, categorized according to the intended audience, and classified according to its level.

distinction between "high" literature and popular fiction is naturally fascinating for every reader , since the former is taught and discussed, while the latter is simply read. Almost every reader has, at some point in their life, been deterred from approaching a work by an excessively serious, yet also extremely tedious, analysis of that work.

Which is more than a shame, and actually not entirely scientifically correct either, because which works truly belong to high literature and from which perspectives these works are discussed is certainly a subject that can be freely discussed.

Many classic works, like the lives of their authors, are highly exciting and thrilling, and fiction, despite its entertainment purpose, is increasingly gaining a place in literature.

We therefore invite you to a not highly scientific, but hopefully entertaining stroll through German literature, in which classics are re-examined, favorite works of fiction find their place that have already changed lives, and some works that populated the bestseller lists for a very long time are somewhat demystified.

In the discussion of individual works, further specifications mentioned above will be addressed; often, these very approaches provide exciting insights into the understanding of a work.

If, in the end, even just a few new "bookworms" emerge, or even just one young reader is encouraged to rediscover an old work through a purchase on Kunstplaza , then this informal way of looking at literature has probably already proven its worth.

Lina Sahne

Passionate author with a keen interest in art

www.kunstplaza.de