Understanding of English Literature

In the first meeting of Literature class, i got the new thing about literature subject. What does literature mean? How is the way to understand it? According to wikipedia, literature is a word derived from a Latin word ‘Littera’ which means, ‘letter of the alphabet’. Literature introduces us to new world of experience. How can it be? We learn about books, we enjoy the comedies and the tragedies of poems, stories, and plays, and we may even grow and evolve through our literary journey with books. These are Literature. It means that literature is really close with our live.

Literature is known as any writing and verbal works of art. Another meaning we can say that literature is particular kind of printed materials, such as poem, short stories, and play. Literature is also known as art. Why does it call ‘art”? I understand it to mean first that a work we call “literarute” says something about issues, experiences, or ideas that are intense, ongoing interest to many people. Some of these definitions tend to describe literature as written works which has some of entertaining display provide pleasure in educating art using language.

We have known that literature simply means anything that is written. Such as time tables, dialogues, textbooks, travel brochures and so on. If you are thinking of buying gadget, computer or TV, you will probably want to see the literature about it. If you are students of teaching training and education department, you will have to read the literature about the teaching technique. So we may conclude all written materials like this general grouping : Historical Books, magazines, newspaper, dictionaries, novels, catalogues, plays, short stories, enclyclopedia etc. We can divide this large mass of material into two different groups. The first one mainly presents information and the next mainly give some entertainment.

Faizal Risdianto, S.S, M.Hum wrote in his article that literature divide into 2 ways : Informative Literature . Literature will be being informative if it tells us about facts, explanation, history, real ‘great’ life figure etc.It tells us the world, for instance, the life of Prophet Muhammad, The story of Soekarno, etc. It mains purpose is to offer knowledge.
Imaginative Literature Literature will be being imaginative if it aims to arouse thoughts and feelings. Its author express his ideas, his feelings, his attitude, he may talks of things ; people, etc. He wants to communicate feelings, not facts (emotion), not information only. Imaginative literature has fuller and deeper sense than informative literature.

According to another resource that i read about literature, Literature is generally divided into three groups, respectively prose, drama, and poetry. Prose uses language not in verse form, e.g., novels, short stories, novellas, etc. Drama is play with its act(s) and its scenes in dialogues, conversations, comedies, tragedies, tragic-comedies, etc. Poetry is the art of poets; poems, in verse form, e.g. ballads, epics, lyrical poetry, etc

Understanding literature is really important for us because literary works teach us about life. When we read some ideas, story, real ‘great’ life figure, it enriches our experience of life. Reading literature also sharpens our soul and make us wiser because literature offers us much knowledge.


REFERENCE :


Risdianto Faizal, Introduction to literature. Trust Media Publishing. 2011


www.wikipedia.com