To any avid reader, characters Dumbledore and Ishmael are household names.
Whether you like wizardry and whales is beside the point, the ‘Harry Potter’ series and ‘Moby Dick’ are familiar titles. Unfamiliar to some is their status; while both novels use engaging language, only one is considered literature. Is one more important than the other, is the question.
As a writer and a teacher of Language and Literature
As a writer and a teacher of Language and Literature who has recently completed ‘The Western Literary Canon in Context’ with The Great Courses, I was surprised to have been surprised by some of its content. Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri gracing the Canon, I expected. Instant bestsellers being frowned upon by scholars, I did not expect. According to the course, the greater the complexity of a novel, the more literary value it contains. In other words, popular fiction is considered accessible to too many and not aloof enough to be literature.
One example is Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ which has had its literary value questioned because of its 4-million-a-year sales. Of course, the writer’s genius in creating his own language for the text, and an endorsement by W.H. Auden (in a genius recognising genius flattery) convinced the Canon that despite its large readership, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is bona fide literature.
As a writer
As a writer, I am replenished by the Canon criteria with an eagerness to add layers upon layers of meaning and parallel characterisation and themes into my working novel. I am taking a magnifying glass to the classics, looking up the nostrils of their stative verbs, scanning the earlobes of their sentences, and listening closely to the heartbeat of their literary devices. While I recognised the human experience in literary quotes before, now Pride and Prejudice’s, ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’; Hamlet’s, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”; and Moby Dick’s, “I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing” are telling me more.
As a teacher,
As a teacher, I am both excited and frightened by this knowledge. Excited to have more tools to demonstrate the difference between language and literature to my students but frightened to know that the novels they are drawn to belong to the ‘language only’ category. I have always distinguished literature from other texts by looking for well written, character driven stories that reflect a timeless human experience; and while I knew that literature can be complicated, I did not know that ambiguity was one of its key features. My mind boggles with strategies to simplify literature without taking away its integrity for my students.
Accurately distinguishing language from literature is an important start. This will equip we writers with the insight to mirror the literary devices found in the classics and utilise the drama appeal of best sellers according to our readership. It will highlight our audience to a new brightness and make not only what they want, but also what they know, our guidelines. Whether we write to offer escapism or challenge minds, it is significant that we realise that literacy ability is the influencing force of our audience’s reading choices. Therefore, approaching our writing with the aim to build literacy is a worthwhile goal. We can begin by dispelling a need to choose, rate or snub one or the other – both serve a literacy purpose. Reading widely to explore, appreciate, advocate and emulate both language – in the form of popular fiction – and literature, is the answer.
Interesting, thanks Louise. I began as a young person writing would-be literary fiction and faction but have bowed to what-people-seem-to-want and tried to produce something more popular. I may revert. Thanks again for your insights.
Thanks for you comment, Jeanette. I know the feeling of writing to what people want. But now, as a teacher, I see how important it is to teach young readers how to identify the similarities and differences between a wide variety of text. This is only possible if we writers produce a variety of books and schools include them in curriculum.