The Nature of Literature

The angle that I found the most interesting, and understood the most, is literature as the ‘foregrounding’ of language. I am infatuated with figurative speech, and this text made me realize that it is a good indicator of literature. When I stopped to think about texts that include alliteration, hyperbole, metaphors, rhyme, and so on, those texts (poetry, short stories, novels, plays) were all included in what I would consider to be literature. On the contrary, texts that steer away from figurative language, like news articles, research papers, and nutrition labels, were all texts that I would not usually consider to be literature. I think figurative speech is what Culler was referring to when he described one aspect of literature to be that it emphasizes that you are looking at language. It asks you to stop and pay extra attention to what you are reading.