What is literature?

Literature: all works of imagination which are transmitted primarily by means of the written word or spoken narrative that is, in the main, novels, stories, and poetry.
John Rowe Townsend

Not only form, but also function:

Literary texts are not defined as those of a certain shape or structure, but as those pieces of language used in a certain way by the community. This use is that the text is not taken as specifically relevant to the immediate context of its origin. That is, the text is used aesthetically, not practically.

Peter Hunt

Literature is language charged with meaning

Ezra Pound

Louise Rosenblatt: Stances for reading

Efferent Stance: to carry away Most concerned with what we are taking away from the reading, with what information can be learned Aesthetic Stance: Focus on the lived through experience of reading Focus on the feelings and images that come and go with the flow of words.

Literature is: the imaginative shaping of life and thought into the forms and structures of language . . . The province of literature is the human condition. Literature illumines life by shaping our insight.
Charlotte Huck

Literature is reading that, by means of imaginative and artistic qualities, provides pleasure and understanding.
Rebecca Lukens

Words are merely words, but real literature for any age is words chosen with skill and artistry to give readers pleasure and to help them understand themselves and others.
Rebecca Lukens

What is childrens Literature?

Books written for a child audience Books which children have taken for their own Childrens literature: works produced to give children spontaneous pleasure, and not primarily to instruct
Harvey Darton

To be childrens literature, a work must speak to and about the experience of the child. Though boundaries in terms of subject matter are open, that principle is still unchanged. It may be that a book will deal with harsh realities, but to be a work of childrens literature, the book must somehow deal with these realities in a way that the child reader can understand from within his or her experience. Winters and Schmidt, 2001, 16

Generalizations about Childrens Literature:

1. is relatively short 2. tends toward simplicity rather than complexity 3. has a strong dependence on visual elements 4. tends to be active rather than passive

Generalizations about Childrens Literature:

5. includes a child protagonist 6. takes the narrative perspective (point of view) of a child, or has a strong omniscient voice 7. usually has a single narrative perspective

Generalizations about Childrens Literature:

8. has a conclusion that is strongly resolved or at least points to a clear resolution 9. has a tone that is generally optimistic and hopeful 10. is didactic, and generally clear in depicting distinct moral worlds

But one reminder . . .

This is childrens literature

This is what makes good literature: it deals with deep human problems in a way that teaches us right and wrong, not by preachy moralizing, but by a gripping story. Charles Colson