What Is Literature? A Definition Based on Prototypes. - ResearchGate Genre is the type or style of literature. Thus, it became a kind of shining example of the Tragic Canon, one which has lasted thousands of years and continues to be read and lauded to this day. William Shakespeare had probably been working as an actor and writer on the professional stage in London for four or five years when the London theaters were closed by order of the Privy Council on June 23, 1592. In order for us to study literature with any kind of depth, first we must decide what constitutes literature. That is one reason why the current study of literature is so exciting. A literary critic is a person who studies and analyzes literature. Skilled artists will use different techniques, like the way they move the paintbrush, the pressure they exert or the direction of the brush. "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog." Imagine explaining this meme to someone who has no idea what it means. Catharsis is the process of releasing strong or pent-up emotions through art. There were no further children from the union. Elizabethan readers would have appreciated much about the poem, from its plentiful wordplay (to shun the blot, she would not blot the letter; Ere she with blood had staind her staind excuse) and verbal dexterity, to the inner debate raging inside Tarquin. Sidney had given Astrophil his own coat of arms, had quibbled with the married name of the supposed original for Stella (Penelope Rich) and with the Greek etymology of his own name (Philip, lover of horses) in Astrophil and Stella sonnets 41, 49, and 53. William Shakespeare's 1602 play Hamlet is arguably the single most "theorized" literary text in the English language. The title page, like Jaggards of The Passionate Pilgrim, relies upon the drawing power of the authors name and promises SHAKE-SPEARES / SONNETS / Never before Imprinted.. And if those who had the means to read and write had to jump through absurd hoops just to have their works published? Sonnet 145 apparently puns on Anne Hathaways name (I hate, from hate away she threw). Such renown as he enjoyed, however, was as transitory as the dramatic form. Why? It draws heavily on Spenser and Daniel and is the complaint of a wronged woman about the duplicity of a man. However, just because a work is not as literary as another does not mean it cannot be enjoyed. If at times it seems to correspond to the many Elizabethan celebrations of male friendship, at others it has a raw physicality that resists such polite categorization. Diction is a writer's unique style of expression, especially his or her choice and arrangement of words. Some personal documents (autobiographies, diaries, memoirs, and letters) rank among the worlds greatest literature. Poetry | Definition, Types, Terms, Examples, & Facts Now that we have at least somewhat clarified the definition of literature, who decides what works are or are not literature? What makes a work artistic? Sidneys Astrophil had inhabited a world of court intrigue, chivalry, and international politics, exemplifying the overlap between political and erotic discourse in Elizabethan England. But not everything expressed in wordseven when organized and written downis counted as literature. William Shakespeare | Poetry Foundation Hamartia - Definition and Examples | LitCharts Until the 1700s, women were not allowed to go to college. My chihuahua's face looks silly and very dramatic. To help you better understand Shakespeare's works we've put together the below Shakespeare dictionary, listing Shakespeare's words, along with a description and example of the word used in context in a Shakespeare play. So how does this relate to our attempts to define literature? There may, of course, have been more than one young man, rival, and dark lady, or in fact the sequence may not be autobiographical at all. Brutus emerges from the shadows, reminding the reader that the poem, notwithstanding its powerful speeches and harrowing images, is also remarkable for what is unshown, untold, implicit. His sequence is remarkable for its thematic and verbal richness, for its extraordinary range of nuances and ambiguities. How to use literature in a sentence. Theme - Definition and Examples | LitCharts What Literature Can Teach Us - ThoughtCo Most would concede there is a difference in quality between these two texts. The particular poems that were in circulation suggest that the general shape and themes of the Sonnets were established from the earliest stages. With Venus and Adonis Shakespeare sought direct aristocratic patronage, but he also entered the marketplace as a professional author. In the final two lines, or couplet, the speaker expresses his confidence in his understanding of what love is, though he admits he may be wrong. It is a fine and elegantly printed book, consisting of 1,194 lines in 199 six-line stanzas rhymed ababcc. In terms of popular magazines, they do not fit the definition of literature as "lasting" in the sense that they usually fade from relevancy quickly after publication. Certainly, works of literature are up for debate: that is the quintessential question literary scholars might ask. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond mere pleasure. The Sonnets occupy a distinct, marginal space between social classes, between public and private, narrative and dramatic, and they proceed not through inverting categories but rather through interrogating them. The 154 sonnets are conventionally divided between the young man sonnets (1-126) and the dark lady sonnets (127-152), with the final pair often seen as an envoy or coda to the collection. They also use it to highlight the positive aspects of a society to promote more goodwill in society. In recent years there has been increasing study of Bensons edition as a distinct literary production in its own right. For students? Shakespeare's Sonnets Sonnet 116 Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes ", "Illinois Prison Bans Frederick Douglass's Memoir and Other "Racial" Books. There is a staidly academic quality to his repudiation of Venuss treatise, her idle over-handled theme. One would be hard-pressed to find a Literature anthology that does not feature William Wordsworth. Yet Shakespeares linguistic performance extends beyond the middling sort. He was a great popularizer, translating court art and high artJohn Lyly, Sidney, Edmund Spenserinto palatable and sentimental commercial forms. 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 not written primarily with literary excellence in mind, though they may possess it, as it were, by accident. Students often throw their hands up in the air over such distinctions, arguing literature is subjective. It was not until the 19th century that women attendedcollege in representative numbers. Yet both are classed as literature, while the speculations of other philosophers, ancient and modern, are not. A history and how-to guide to the famous form. It is conventionally assumed (though attendance registers do not survive) that Shakespeare attended the Kings New School in Stratford, along with others of his social class. The poem addresses such artistic preoccupations of the 1590s as the relation of poetry to painting and the possibility of literary immortality, as well as social concerns such as the phenomenon of masterless women, and the (to men) alarming and unknowable forces unleashed by female desire, an issue that for a host of reasons fascinated Elizabeths subjects. thou art too dear for my possessing, Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt and will do none, Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been, Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring, Sonnet 104: To me, fair friend, you never can be old, Sonnet 106: When in the chronicle of wasted time, Sonnet 107: Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul, Sonnet 109: O! This spectrum can be a helpful way to think about literature because it provides a more open-ended way to discuss writing as art than simply labeling works as literary or not. In this extended essay, she describes an imaginary sister of William Shakespeare who could have been just as great of a writer had she the same opportunities as her brother. The self-conscious rhetorical display and the examination of representation is daringly politicized, explicitly, if inconclusively, connecting the aesthetic and the erotic with politics both sexual and state. PDF An Introduction to Literary Theory - Saylor Academy Just like in the Shakespearean drama, the colon indicates what each character (me and the students, in this case) is saying or doing. Lucrece, like so many of Shakespeares historical tragedies, problematizes the categories of history and myth, of public and private, and exemplifies the bewildering nature of historical parallels. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. What about the way it was written causes you to feel the way you do about it? But perhaps the most significant recent developments have been the feminist treatments of the poem, the reawakening interest in rhetoric, and a dawning awareness of the works political engagement. ", "Banned Books of Guantnamo: 'An American Slave' by Frederick Douglass. Essentially, this sonnet presents the extreme ideal of romantic love: it never changes, it never fades, it outlasts death and admits no flaw. On the other hand, the acceptance of the traditional distinction between the young man and the dark lady sonnets obscures the fact that Shakespeare seems deliberately to render the gender of his subject uncertain in the vast majority of cases. What story would you tell if you could? This is particularly true of books of natural history, where the element of personal observation is of special importance. What kinds of stories do you want to read? Literature is a form of human expression. He was baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564, his mothers third child, but the first to survive infancy. Similarly, throughout much of Western history, women have been discouraged from pursuing reading and writing, as it distracted from society's expectations for women to focus on motherly and household duties. It is now generally accepted as Shakespearean and dated at some point between 1600 and 1609, possibly revised from a 1600 first version for publication in Thorpes volume.