Literature in our life

LITERATURE IN OUR LIFE

Literature is one of the fine arts. It refers to «belles-lettres», a French phrase that means «beautiful writing». We distinguish between literature and comic books. When we speak of a piece of writing as literature, we are praising it.

Literature has two main divisions: fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is writing that an author creates from the imagination. Authors may include facts about real persons or events, but they combine these facts with imaginary situations. Most fiction is narrative writing, such as novels and short stories. Fiction also includes drama and poetry. Nonfiction is factual writing about real-life situations. The chief forms of nonfiction include the essay, history, biography, autobiography, and diary.

We all read for a variety of reasons. These reasons change with our age, our interests, and the literature we read. Our basic reason for reading is probably pleasure. We read literature mostly because we enjoy it.

Reading for pleasure may take various forms. We may read just to pass the time. Or, we may want to escape the four walls that usually surround us. Reading serves as a jet airplane that speeds us away from ourselves into the worlds of other people.

We often read for information and knowledge. We find pleasure in learning about life in the Swiss Alps or the Mississippi River. We find possible solutions to our problems when we meet people in books whose problems are like our own. Through literature, we sometimes understand situations we could not understand in real life.

We also read simply for the enjoyment we get from the arrangement of words. We can find pleasure even in nonsense syllables, just as children like the sound of «Ring Around the Rosie», although they may not know what the words mean.

No work of literature has wisdom or beauty in itself. The greatest poem ever written is only a printed sheet of paper until a reader reacts to it. Writing, to become literature, requires a reader. The reader helps to create literature by responding to the writer's thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. Creative readers measure the honesty of the writer's approach by their own ideas of truth. Creative reading leads to the deepest enjoyment of literature.

Reading is such a personal activity that there can be no final rules for judging a piece of writing. Yet, readers and critics do agree on certain writings that they consider classics, or literature of the highest rank. For example, thousands of stories have been published about young lovers whose parents disapproved of their romance. Most of these stories were soon forgotten. But for more than 300 years, Shakespeare's «Romeo and Juliet» has been considered a classic story of young love.

Shakespeare was a superb craftsman. In his play, he used words and phrases that are packed with meaning. But, perhaps, more important, Shakespeare gave «Romeo and Juliet» broad human values. These values were not limited to one place or to one period of time. The characters of the play seem to be real people who face real problems. They express fillings that people anywhere might have at any time. They will probably appeal to readers during the 2000's just as they did to readers intellect's.

Every reader is a critic. Even when we say we have no opinion of a book, we are making a judgment. But such a judgment is a poor one, based on little thought. Our ability to judge literature intelligently develops as our reading broadens.

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