Definitions of Literature

What is Literature?

The Norton Introdution to Literature give a 2-part dictionary definition:
Literature is "imaginative or creative work of recognized artistic value."

Other authors weigh in:

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.
~ C. S. Lewis

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature ... is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth.
~Jim Rohn

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
~Ezra Pound

There is only one school of literature - that of talent.
~Vladimir Nabokov

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
~Iris Murdoch

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.
~Margaret Atwood

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
~Boris Pasternak

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