Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28004
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/28004
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Books are classified for various reasons. The word literature is used in more than one classifications scheme.

For the purpose of selling books, "literary fiction" is a genre like any other. Genre is sometimes thought of in terms of subject matter, but it would really make more sense to think of it as a kind of contract with the reader, a promise to deliver a certain kind of pleasure. Take science fiction for example. You are not likely to find Mary Doria Russell's _The Sparrow_, Doris Lessing's _Canopus in Argos_, or C.S. Lewis' _Out of the Silent Planet_, shelved in Science Fiction, even though they are all set in space and on other planets. They don't deliver the kind of pleasure that typical sci fi readers are looking for, and are more likely to be shelved as literature. Literary fiction, for this purpose seems to mean works that are more contemplative in nature, or that focus more on character or place than on action. It may cover the subject matter of other genres but with a different focus.

Academically, Literature seems to be more a function of time. Literature is the classics, though I am not sure this distinction necessarily holds any more.

Personally, I draw a distinction between Literature and Pulp based on whether the work is morally serious, by which I mean whether it attempts to portray the human experience as it really is, of it is portrays it aspirationally, as we would like it to be, not as it is.

But I think you will find that there is always a value judgement involved in the use of the word literature. It is fundamentally about worthiness and people will clearly disagree about what constitutes worthiness in art. At best you can expect to get a definition that represents the views of a particular school of thought, not one that depends solely on concrete observable characteristics.

It is fashionable today to doubt the viability to aesthetic judgements. They are fundamentally not scientific and it is fashionable to regard any judgement that is not scientific in nature as meaningless. I am not of that school, but I recognize that in modern parlance that pattern of thought essentially reduces all aesthetic judgement to mere opinion. It is up to each of us to decide if we grant them more credence than that.

Original score: 6