Chaewon Lee

What is Literature and Does it Matter?

1.           After reading the chapter What is literature and does it matter? I think the most important aspect of this section was when Culler drew an analogy between literature and weeds in a garden. This is because in this section, Culler discusses what makes readers treat some texts as literature. I think in order to define what literature is, it is important to analyze what makes us, the reader treat a piece of writing as literature in the first place. The authors analogy makes me wonder what weeds out great works of literature to plain nonsense. Culler says “What sets off literary works from other narrative display texts is that they have undergone a process of selection: they have been published, reviewed and reprinted, so that readers approach them with the assurance that others have found them well constructed and “worth it” (27).  I think that Culler discussing that not every piece of writing is worth calling a piece of literature is the first step in finding out what defines literature. It makes me question what sets apart the texts that I read as literature to just empty words on a page.                                                             It is important to think about definitions of literature because literature is everywhere in our lives. We are surrounded by pieces of writing everyday from small to bigger texts, so it is important to recognize the meaning behind the texts that surrounds us everyday.

2. A question that stayed with me as I read this chapter was, “What is involved in treating things as literature in our culture”( 23)?

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