What even is literature anyway?
We consume pages upon pages of media everyday, from the signposts to the websites we read. Passive consumption comes to us naturally and we spend so much time reading or looking at things without really thinking. So when I read a book, I assume that is literature because it engages me to think.
Literature, however, has never really had a clear definition, as history shows that things like letters were considered literature. Many people, including myself, were astonished to find out, because we defined literature and limited it to works considered a part of the literary canon. To define literature, we read several works in the literary canon and discussed the elements of the works shown by critics like Eagleton. Eagleton argues that literature is work that uses everyday language distorted to engage readers and present what is valuable to a society, the human condition. He demonstrates this by comparing approaches in analyzing literature and seeing what kind of truths are gathered through these approaches. Literature is hard to define because finding the value of literature takes active engagement with the material. Our understanding of literature requires thorough analysis of cultures, context, style, choices, and language use. Ultimately, literature is engaging text that uses worldbuilding and ambiguity to tell the reader of a value or an aspect of the human condition. Moving forward, I would like to pay more attention as I read and allow myself to get lost in the world of the author. Instead of scrolling by, I can discover and learn more about the world around me.