A dozen eggs, milk, strawberry jam, and Oreos don't cut it

What is literature?

I was originally thinking that literature is like science. When science is mentioned, one wonders What kind of science? Chemistry? Biology? Library science?

Literature can be divided similarly. All types of literature can even be divided further--like science. Fiction, romance, westerns. Chemistry, organic chemistry.

What is it that constitutes literature in the first place? My final answer is that anything written with effort that is published in book or pamphlet form is literature, including musical publication, that can be seen and distributed to more than one person. A shopping list is not literature even if some thought went into finding what normal contents of the fridge are missing and needed and shared or distributed to others. That is just jotting down random thoughts so you don't forget because there are words to be associated with things.

From What is Literature

As Terry Eagleton points out, "we can drop once and for all the illusion that the category 'literature' is objective in the sense of being eternally given and immutable" (10). He goes on to say that our opinions and value-judgments are not neutral either, that "the ways in which what we say and believe connects with the power-structure and power-relations of the society we live in" (14). In other words, your opinions about literature are not just your opinions. They are related to how and where you were raised and educated.

Importantly, our environment encourages us to accept certain values, opinions, groups, etc. with which much literature is associated. I feel that the "acceptable" scholastic literary materials are mostly written accounts mirroring the ideas of the general higher interest. Therefore, how we define literature reveals what we have been taught to value and what we have been taught to reject based on the views and background of the people in charge of planning curriculums.

J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel Cathcher in the Rye probably would not have been considered literature suitable for schoolwork in the 20s. Scholars eventually came to relate to the novel, making it suitable scholastic literature. Someday in the future J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books might be alongside Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Our views and values will change.

Still, whether or not Raising Your New Puppy pamphlets or Gregory Maguire's Wicked make it to the "classics," the fact that they are published, distributed, and organized writings make them literature.