Writing: Playing with Definitions

[sartorias]

One of the things recently discussed: it’s even more difficult to define what is, and is not, good literature when our fundamental definition of the purpose of literature is radically different from another’s.

That’s not to say that I believe there is a single definition. I do not. I will only go so far as to posit that my own definition works

Comments

[egretplume]

What a wonderful Austen quote!

The purpose of literature -- such an excellent topic. What was the Aristotelian one (was it Aristotle?) -- to delight,inform, instruct? Something like that. My definition includes that the text must heighten my awareness of language or construction. Somehow the making of the story/poem/essay/, er, text, as well as its content, shows me something about the world, and about making meaning.

I've had very frustrating conversations with a writer friend who insists that things are good if she likes them and not good if she doesn't, that it's all personal taste. I don't think it is all personal taste, but then saying so makes me sound such a snob.

Sorry to put such roughdraft firststab notions in your comments :) but thanks for such a great topic!

[sartorias]

One of the most freeing things about this sort of forum, at least for me, is the fact that we can express our first thoughts without having to footnote or apply the rigors of academic expression. (At which I am not very deedy.)

I suspect there may be as many purposes as their are readers. I like that about making meaning--that one resonates.

[lnhammer]

... the purpose of literature, as opposed to “mere” popular writing, was to depict the irruption of the irrational into our false perception of order. Now, this seems to me a philosophical position.

Indeed it is. And I vigorously disagree with the postulate.

---L.

[sartorias]

[g]

So...what would you posit for a purpose of litrachoor?

[lnhammer]

What She Said.

---L.

[ex_greythist387]

the purpose of literature, as opposed to “mere” popular writing, was to depict the irruption of the irrational into our false perception of order

Um, wow. So much depends on who the reader is for a given text; surely we haven't the same singular perception of order, however slight, solid, or false. What about value judgments, which aren't universally bad? I'm curious, too, whether the person paraphrased meant to credit or efface authorial intention in ascribing "purpose."

[sartorias]

As I recall our discussion tentacled out from these very same questions--but that was the bottom line for my disptant.

[quiller77]

I love that last line in the Austen quote. Undervalued indeed, so much so, that every third store clerk, brain surgeon, sanitary engineer and librarian is going to write a novel ... when they retire.
I find myself agreeing with janni. A story that engages us, has the power to lift us out of our day to day realities, to show us possibilities we might not otherwise see. But if it's not well written, if it leaves me flat, I return it to the shelf largely unread, no matter how lofty the ideas contained within. Words have power only if we read them and absorb them.

[rysmiel]

My own definition of the purpose of literature is not just to hold up a mirror to ourselves-we are endlessly fascinating to ourselves--but to posit how we can improve this civilization by extrapolating this or that idea through the form of entertainment.

I don't know about "purpose of literature", but that's certainly a large part of what strikes me as worthwhile about writing SF in particular; in that some aspects of quondam reality seem to me better addressed from a perspective that stands outside them, in ways literature bound to the sundry accidents of what has actually happened can't do.

[sartorias]

Exactly, exactly. I first saw this concept when I was a callow fourteen year old--yet I cannot seem to convince some academic friends of mine who insist on equating SF not just with rockets and blasters, but retro-politics.

[lnhammer]

Ask them to consider Utopia.

---L.

[kateelliott]