In Response to Nicole (1/31/2012)

This is not a direct response to Nicole’s post; instead, this is a comment on the discussion that her post started.

The main point that I wanted to comment on revolved around one excerpt from her blogpost:

“the attribute of being written is so fundamental to the mere word ‘literature’ that it would be wrong to try and change that.”

Brandon responded by stating that:

“just because something has been associated with one word for a long time does not mean that it would be 'wrong' to change it - it may very well be warranted to do so.”

I find this discussion to be intriguing to say the least, and it shows from the fact that I blogged about this topic yesterday. First, I should state that I completely agree with Brandon in that we should not view something as inherently correct simply because it has been popular in the past to view it in that way. Consequently, I think that we are correct in questioning whether something needs to be written in order to be considered as literature.

With that said, I think that, as a whole, I completely agree with Nicole’s point. As I stated in my post on this topic, it seems that popular usage plays a significant role in determining the denotation of every word. Furthermore, as Nicole states in her post, literature has always been associated with writing. Accordingly, I do not think it would be correct to view it any differently. Yes, there may not be great reason as to why being in a written form needs to be a necessary condition other than the reason that Nicole provided, but there is also not any great reason as to why we should include non-written forms of composition into the category of literature.

Unless someone can illustrate that we are ‘well warranted’ to include forms of non-written composition in the category of literature, I do not find any adequate reasons as to why we should we should not accept the common view of literature as only pertaining to forms of writing.