In the section called “The Nature of Literature” which is from Chapter 2 of the article “What is literature and does it matter” by Johnathan Culler, Culler had interpreted the nature of literature from five various angles which are literature as ‘foregrounding’ of language, literature as the integration of language, literature as fiction, literature as aesthetic object and literature as intertextual or self-reflexive construct. Personally Speaking, the part I find is most interesting among these five angles is literature as fiction. One of main factors that makes literature different from other works is there is a particular relationship between literature and the world called fictionality. As Culler mentioned in the article, ” The literary work is a linguistic event which projects a fictional world that includes speakers, actors, events, and implied audiences.” , literary works provide imaginary world to readers and leave some space for them to build up their own scenarios and create the characters based on their understanding of that particular literary work. Compared to non-fictional works including newspaper, textbooks, instructions and so on, literature gives brand new experience for readers to wonder what is fictionality really about and interpret it in their own ways.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
Even though I chose to write about Literature as Aesthetic I agree that literature as fiction is also very interesting. I think the overall theme i’m getting from Culler’s writing is that there is a bit of subjectivity in our interactions with literature as a whole and fiction and the personal emotional attachments we form with characters, places or events in the books and stories we read seem to highlight this.