The document provides definitions and perspectives on literature from various thinkers and authors throughout history. Aristotle viewed literature as an imitation of events that can express emotions, while Plato saw it as an imitation twice removed from reality. Wordsworth believed literature creatively expresses Platonic ideas through emotional experiences. More recently, Shklovsky defined literature as making the familiar seem strange to jolt automatic perception.

1. Definitions and
Meanings of Literature

2. Etymology:
LATIN: literatura/litteratura
- writing formed with letters

3. Literature is the best of what has been thought
and written.(“Preface to the Poems”)
-Arnold

4. Literature is an imitation of a sequence of events.
Literature can be categorized and, thereby,
understood according to the method of operation
and execution of each category. Viewing or reading
literature facilitates the expression (pushing out)
of undesirable emotions. (“Poetics”).
-Aristotle

5. Literature is the execution in language of a
number of rules that govern how to render
an imitation of events gracefully and according
to form and verisimilitude.
(‘’The Discourses on Dramatic Poetry’’)
- Corneille

6. Literature is an imitation of events or objects
in such a manner as to render a ‘’golden’’
world, improved over the real object in nature
(which Sidney calls ‘’brazen’’) Literature ought
to delight, instruct, and inspirit the reader.
(‘’An Apology for Poesy’’)
- Horace

7. Literature is a faithful reproduction of life, executed in an artistic
pattern. It is the orchestration of the manifold but elemental
experiences of man, blended into harmonious and desired patterns
of expression. (‘’Phil. Literature from Ancient Times to the present’’)
- Del Castillo and Medina

8. Literature is an imitation which has been judged to have
value a period of centuries as a true but general reflection
of human nature in a variety of real or imaginary
circumstances. (‘’Preface to Shakespeare’’)
- Johnson

9. Literature is written work that causes or fails to
cause the experience of the sublime---awe
attached to terror. (‘’On the Sublime’’)
- Longinus

10. Literature is language that draws attention to the
mode of expression and thereby goes beyond
merely describing or communicating
ideas.
- Mukarovsky

11. Literature is an imitation (in words) of an imitation
(In matter or material existence) of an idea that exists
originally in the mind of God. As an imitation twice
removed from the true reality, it is inferior, deceptive,
and dangerous, largely because audiences imitate what they
see and read.
- Plato

12. Literature is an imitation of nature that is executed
not by copying nature directly but rather by
imitating the works and techniques of previous
writers who are somehow ‘’close’’ to nature and
to the original. (‘’An Essay on Criticism’’)
- Pope

13. Literature is a creative expression of Platonic ideas that
is cast in a form that affects readers by operating upon
their sympathies and antipathies, thereby affording an
emotional experience of ideas that Plato had believed
could be apprehended logically.(‘’Preface to the Cenci,’’
Defense of Poetry)
- Wordsworth

14. Literature defamiliarizes the familiar; that is, it
caused us to see the ordinary in a way that jolts
us out automatic ways of perceiving And acting.
(‘’Art as Technique”)
- Shlovsky

15. The business of criticism , is not to find fault nor to display
the critic’s own learning Or influence , but it is to know
“the best which has been thought and said in the World”
and by using this knowledge to create a current of fresh
and free thought.
-Matthew Arnold-The Critic

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