What is literature?

The Landscape of Discourses until 1750/1850

• literature = learning, learned publications

• materials: predominantly scholarly publications
• discussed in "histories of literature" and in journals reviewing latest events in the republic of learning
• geographical scope: competition of the nations
• historical scope: progress in learning and comparison of ancient and modern learning

• belles lettres = all fashionable and elegant pieces of learning including poetry, fiction

• materials: all fashionable publications such as novels, poems, plays, memoirs, (scandalous) histories
• discussed mainly in prefaces to elegant works, exceptionally also in works of literature
• geographical scope: European market, main language French
• historical scope: comparison of ancient and modern elegance

• poetry/poesy = artful compositions of language - mainly versified

• materials: poetic genres including prose comedy and all works performed with music as operas, cantatas, masks, ballets
• discussed in poetological works with a view on beauties of language and the observation of rules every art and genre has to follow
• geographical scope: mostly on the main languages of poetry: (due to Opera) Italian and French
• historical scope: search for the ultimate work in each language

• fiction = a story to be read for its instruction and entertainment even if it should be feigned

• materials: romances = fictional prose histories of love and/or adventure presented in a series of adventures; novels = short stories related for the sake of its (new) example, ending with a surprising point
• interpreted - after Huet’s Treatise on the Origin of Romances (1670) as a cultural indicator
• geographical scope: all cultures united by a world wide transmission of stories and fashions - great interest in foreign tastes
• historical scope: all periods - growing interest in lost concepts

Period of Transition: 1750-1850

• The debate of learning adopts and approriates discussions of the belles lettres, poetry and fiction - yet it

• develops a perspective on the nation (as the provider of the language literature has to use)
• focusses on the "poetic" genres after Aristotle (and thus excludes the international opera)
• accepts a reformed novel as a "literary" genre as long as one can read this novel as a cultural indicator of deeper significance and with a special interest in the nation's past (a step designed to exclude the European chronique scandaleuse)
• develops new journals of a broader appeal devoted on these new debates of literature
• offers its expertise to the nation in a process in which literature can become a national topic to be taught at secularised schools
• calls for authors to write works to be reviewed within the new debates of literature
• divides the preceding markets into

• a "high" segment of literary works - worthy to be analysed and discussed
• a mass market of materials not worthy to notice

• deconceptualises the preceding debates of literature, the belles lettres, poetry and fiction

The Landscape of Discourses since the 1850s

• The sciences have developed their own specialised debates
• The general discussion of literature focusses on a small field of works which can, however, no longer be defined (due to the different debates between which we can switch whenever we want to discuss something as literature
• The question "What Is Literature" is now a key question designed to

• format the national canon
• keep materials out of the general debates of cultural phenomena
• allow or bar discussions we (those who discuss literature) could adopt and appropriate to spread or to limit our discussion