Definition of Literature

From Suzanne Fleischman's Tense and Narrativity, p. 383 (note 83):

"Literature" is here understood to refer to that body of discourses or texts that, within a society, are considered worthy of dissemination, transmission, and preservation in essentially constant form and are not perceived as simply everyday communication, a purely utilitarian use of language (Fabre and Lacroix 1974: 70; Bright 1982: 171). Resonating with this definition, which ultimately goes back to Hockett (1958), is John Ellis's pragmatic statement (1974: 50) that "literature is not distinguished by defining characteristics but by the characteristic use to which those texts are put by the community."


_______

Suzanne Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction. London: Routledge, 1990.

Fabre, Daniel, and Jacques Lacroix. La Tradition orale du conte occitan, vol. 1. Paris: PUF, 1974.
Bright, William. "Poetic Structures in Oral Narrative." In Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy. Ed. Deborah Tannen. Norwood (NJ): Ablex, 1982. 171-84.

Hockett, Charles F. A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

Ellis, John. The Theory of Criticism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1974.

Por qué 'el ensayo no es literatura' según Jesús G. Maestro

—oOo—