Draft:Original research/Literature

Literature is the art of written work, and can, in some circumstances, refer exclusively to published sources.

The two major classifications of literature are poetry and prose (which can be further sub-divided into fiction and non-fiction).

Literature may consist of texts based on factual information (journalistic or non-fiction), as well as on original imagination, such as polemical works as well as autobiography, and reflective essays as well as belles-lettres. Literature can be classified according to historical periods, genres, and political influences. The concept of genre, which earlier was limited, has broadened over the centuries. A genre consists of artistic works which fall within a certain central theme, and examples of genre include romance, mystery, crime, fantasy, erotica, and adventure, among others.

Two others are science fiction and horror.

"Literature" is a highly ambiguous term: at its broadest, it can mean any sequence of words that has been preserved for transmission in some form or other (including oral transmission); more narrowly, it is often used to designate imaginative works such as narrative stories, poems, and plays; more narrowly still, it is used as an honorific and applied only to those works which are considered to have particular merit.

Theory of literature
Def. "the body of [all] written work" is called literature.

The theory of literature involves methods of studying and investigating literature, its "nature and function"; "literary theory, criticism, and history; and general, comparative, and national literature."

Def. “[t]he theory or the philosophy of the interpretation of literature and literary criticism” is called literary theory.

Literary criticism
Def. “[t]he study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature” is called literary criticism.

"But my point is that one constant within this struggle remains: that an oppositional culture of non-dominant groups has to define itself against the practices and ideology of the dominant group (or groups), and this inevitably has consequences for form. Indeed, only a very unsophisticated literary criticism could conceive of form and content as distinct entities."

Compositions
A newspaper, or online, feature article is composed of the following:
 * 1) a lede,
 * 2) topic sentence,
 * 3) a body, and an
 * 4) ending.

The ratio of each of these may depend on the audience. In an inverted pyramid style the ratios are about 5:3:2 for lead (including topic sentence), body, and ending.

There is also what's called a "news-peg" or "hook", something that will interest a reader, usually the first sentence or the title.

The following elements should be present: What, When, Where, Why, Who, and How. Nearly all of these elements must appear somewhere in the story.

Debates
Def. “a type of literary composition, taking the form of a discussion or disputation” is called debate.

Debate occurs in public meetings, academic institutions, and legislative assemblies.

Debating is also carried out for educational and recreational purposes, usually associated with educational establishments and debating societies.

Debating topics covered a broad spectrum of topics while the debating societies allowed participants from both genders and all social backgrounds, making them an excellent example of the enlarged public sphere of the Age of Enlightenment. Debating societies were a phenomenon associated with the simultaneous rise of the public sphere, a sphere of discussion separate from traditional authorities and accessible to all people that acted as a platform for criticism and the development of new ideas and philosophy.

John Henley, a clergyman, founded an Oratory in 1726 with the principal purpose of "reforming the manner in which such public presentations should be performed." He made extensive use of the print industry to advertise the events of his Oratory, making it an omnipresent part of the London public sphere. Henley was also instrumental in constructing the space of the debating club: he added two platforms to his room in the Newport district of London to allow for the staging of debates, and structured the entrances to allow for the collection of admission. These changes were further implemented when Henley moved his enterprise to Lincoln's Inn Fields. The public was now willing to pay to be entertained, and Henley exploited this increasing commercialization of British society. By the 1770s, debating societies were firmly established in London society.

Dramas
Def. “[a] composition, normally in prose, telling a story and intended to be represented by actors impersonating the characters and speaking the dialogue” is called a drama.

Essays
Def. “[a] written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject” is called an essay.

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view.

Fictions
Def. a "[l]iterary type using invented or imaginative writing, instead of real facts, usually written as prose” is called fiction.

Romances
The "popularity of old-fashioned romance novels featuring conventional and traditional gender roles seems to defy the stances of the modern-day women's liberation movement."

A romance novel might be characterized as a "hyper-romantic, contrived and extremely unrealistic tales of handsome, manly heroes falling in love with virginal women, enduring a series of adventures, then inexorably ending in a happy resolution."

“Romance novels offer an escape from daily life with the belief that true love really exists.”

"Romance novels [portrayed by the partial cover image on the right] are at once the most scorned and popular form of literature in the world, accounting for as much as 40% of total book sales in much of the world. The average romance reader (and writer) is female, ambitious, leads a very full and busy life, and has an above-average education and intelligence. The livelihood of some of the world’s most critically-acclaimed (mostly male) authors depends on the revenue base generated from the sale of the remarkably diverse genre called ‘romance’, written by and bought overwhelmingly by women."

Mysteries
Def. a "suspenseful, sensational genre of story, book, play or film", such as a "detective story, mystery novel, whodunit, crime fiction", is called a thriller.

"The scripts for the series [I Love a Mystery] were usually themed towards the dark and supernatural, with perhaps the most famous, or infamous (depending on your point of view) scenario being “Temple of the Vampires,” which aroused a great deal of censorial comment when first broadcast as a twenty-episode serial from January 22 through February 16, 1940."

Crimes
"Accounts of true crime have always been enormously popular among readers. The subgenre would seem to appeal to the highly educated as well as the barely educated, to women and men equally. The most famous chronicler of true crime trials in English history is the amateur criminologist William Roughead, a Scots lawyer who between 1889 and 1949 attended every murder trial of significance held in the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, and wrote of them in essays published first in such journals as The Juridical Review and subsequently collected in best-selling books with such titles as Malice Domestic, The Evil That Men Do, What Is Your Verdict?, In Queer Street, Rogues Walk Here, Knave's Looking Glass, Mainly Murder, Murder and More Murder, Nothing But Murder, and many more…. Roughead's influence was enormous, and since his time "true crime" has become a crowded, flourishing field, though few writers of distinction have been drawn to it."

Fantases
Def. a "literary genre generally dealing with themes of magic and [fictive] medieval technology" is called fantasy.

Eroticas
Def. literature "relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement" is called erotic literature, or erotica.

On the left is a cover image from the new erotica e-book by Elizabeth Black called "PURR a Puss 'n Boots Twisted Tale".

Adventures
Adventure fiction is a genre of fiction in which an adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, forms the main storyline.

"An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work."

Science fictions
Def.' "[f]iction in which advanced technology and/or science is a key element" is called science fiction.

Horrors
Def. a "genre of fiction, meant to evoke a feeling of fear and suspense" is called horror.

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror specifically and exclusively focuses on and publishes current horror fictional literature.

Laws
Def. “[a] written or understood rule that concerns behaviors and the appropriate consequences thereof” is called law.

Narratives
Def. "the systematic recitation of an event or series of events" is called a narrative.

A narrative is a constructive format (as a work of speech, writing, song, film, television, video games, photography or theatre) that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events.

Further, the word "story" may be used as a synonym of "narrative", but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative. An important part of narration is the narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate the narrative through a process narration.

Philosophies
Def. a written work “that seeks truth through reasoning rather than empiricism” is called philosophy.

"The Tengrism tangraïsme or sometimes (in Mongolian: Тэнгэр шүтлэг, Tenger shütleg, worship (or religion) of heaven) was the major belief of Xiongnu and Xianbei which consisted of the Turkish population, Mongolian, Hungarian and Bulgarian in antiquity. It focuses around the divinity of the eternal sky Tengri (also transliterated Tangri, Tanrı, Tangra, etc.), and incorporates elements of shamanism, animism, totemism and ancestor worship." Translated using Google Translate.

The Daychin Tengry - Turkic pagan god is shown in the image on the right.

That a text of this philosophy, or religion, probably existed is suggested by the stamp on the left used by Güyük Khan, in a letter of 1246.

Plays
Def. "[a] literary composition, intended to be represented by actors impersonating the characters and speaking the dialogue" or "a theatrical performance featuring actors" is called a play.

Poems
Def. a literary piece written in verse” is called a poem.

Geography
At the right is an allegorical painting in the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, 1915.

It is one among many connected to the literature of the time preceded by a long and baroque heritage expressed even in the final years of the nineteenth century in various regions and in art and culture.

On the left is a form of geographic literature consisting of a geographic map showing the locations of Turkic peoples and their languages.

History
Def. “[a] [written] record or narrative description of past events” is called history.

On the right is an illustration of the "Hof van Beselare" in Flanders, Belgium, from the history book, Flandria Illustrata by Antoon Sanders.

Natural sciences
Def. a written work “studying phenomena or laws of the physical world” is called natural science.

An example of a natural science, or sciences, journal is shown on the right with its cover image.

Abstractions
Def.
 * 1) a "separation from worldly objects",
 * 2) "the withdrawal from one's senses",
 * 3) the "act of focusing on one characteristic of an object rather than the object as a whole group of characteristics; the act of separating said qualities from the object or ideas",
 * 4) the "act of comparing commonality between distinct objects and organizing using those similarities; the act of generalizing characteristics; the product of said generalization",
 * 5) an "idea of an unrealistic or visionary nature", or
 * 6) any "generalization technique that ignores or hides details to capture some kind of commonality between different instances for the purpose of controlling the intellectual complexity of engineered systems, particularly software systems"

is called an abstraction.

The image on the right is an example of the literature of abstraction.

Intellects
On the right, as an example of intellect literature, is an image of the Issue 2 cover of Intellect Magazine.

Def. "the faculty of thinking, judging, abstract reasoning, and conceptual understanding; the cognitive faculty" is called an intellect.

Humanities
On the right is a cover for the book A New Companion to Digital Humanities, a companion to a book on the humanities.

Sciences
On the right is a cover image for performing health sciences literature reviews.

Engineering
Def. the "application of [mathematics and the physical sciences] to the needs of humanity and the development of technology" is called engineering

On the right, as an example of engineering literature, is a cover image of the List of Periodical Engineering Literature.

Humor
Def. the "quality of being amusing, comical, funny" is called humor, or humour.

Literary history
"To justify the existence and the methods of literary history is entirely superfluous nowadays, and it is no less superfluous to dwell upon the differences and likenesses between it and literary criticism. Our common sense tells us, if we do away with prejudices and futile scholarly discussions, that literary history, working in its own field, is trying neither to replace nor to oppose literary criticism. Literary history thinks that it can help literary criticism; can clear a path for it; can lighten its task of understanding, judging, and classifying literary works and the great movements of human thought. It offers its services as a devoted auxiliary, modest and self-effacing. It has no imperialistic designs: it covers enough territory already to have no need to encroach on that of a neighbor. It prepares the material for the critic but puts no restrictions on the way [she] should use it. If he has faith in impressionistic criticism, if [she] believes that the literary critic should surrender himself to the emotion produced by the book [she] is studying and then should express this emotion with precision and delicacy, he is free to do so. Literary history asks [her] only to base his personal reaction on facts that have been historically verified, to define [her] position clearly, and, when communicating a purely personal reaction to the public, not to believe or to make others believe that he is giving any added information about the work or its writer. "Impressionism", says Lanson, "is the only method that puts us in touch with beauty. Let us, then, use it for this purpose, frankly, but let us limit it to this, rigorously. To distinguish knowing from felling, what we may know from what we should feel; to avoid feeling when we can know, and thinking that we know when we feel: to this, it seems to me, the scientific method of literary history can be reduced."1"

Sweden
The Rök runestone is considered the first piece of written Swedish literature and thus it marks the beginning of the history of Swedish literature.

It was proposed that the inscription has nothing at all to do with the recording of heroic sagas and that it contains riddles which refer only to the making of the stone itself.

The Rök runestone inscription is not connected to heroic deeds in war. Instead it deals with the conflict between light and darkness, warmth and cold, life and death.

"The Rök runestone from central middle Sweden, [is] dated to around 800 CE [...] Combining perspectives and findings from semiotics, philology, archaeology, and history of religion, the study presents a completely new interpretation which follows a unified theme, showing how the monument can be understood in the socio-cultural and religious context of early Viking Age Scandinavia. The inscription consists, according to the pro­posed interpretation, of nine enigmatic questions. Five of the questions con­cern the sun, and four of them, it is argued, ask about issues related to the god Odin. A central finding is that there are relevant parallels to the inscription in early Scandinavian poetry, especially in the Eddic poem Vafþrúðnismál."

Hypotheses

 * 1) Literature may also exist from other species or ancestors of hominins.