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What Is “Literature”?Christopher R. Trogan

A first- day exercise that asks one of the most basic questions in a literature class.

Genre: anyCourse Level: introductoryStudent Difficulty: easyTeacher Preparation: mediumClass Size: anySemester Time: first dayWriting Component: noneClose Reading: lowEstimated Time: 45 to 50 minutes

EXERCISEIn preparation for the first day of class, assemble a number of different “texts” from a range of printed media. Include traditional literary examples (select passages from novels, plays, or poetry, each on its own sheet of paper; try to include excerpts from both canonical and noncanonical texts), as well as nontraditional items, such as an advertisement, an informational brochure, a train schedule, a musical score, or a photograph. If you wish, the traditional examples may be from your own syllabus, but they do not need to be.

In class, put your students into small groups and distribute one example to each group. If you have a small class, you can give each group more than one example. Ask each group to decide whether its item is a work of liter-ature, and why. While all students must contribute to the discussion, one student in each group must take notes and another student must report to the class. Announce a set amount of time (ten to fifteen minutes is usually sufficient) to arrive at a response and a rationale.

Once the groups are ready, reconvene the class and collect the examples. Project each example in the front of the room as the student reporter offers the group’s position, analysis, and defense. If you don’t have an overhead projector or screen, you can ask each group to hold up the example or pass it around the room. For each example, establish a dialogue between yourself, the group, and the rest of the class: What criteria did the group use to deter-mine whether its example is a work of literature? Does the rest of the class agree with these criteria and with the group’s position?

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222 | What Is “Literature”?

After you have moved through each of the examples (you can consider timing them: a few minutes each), extrapolate to larger questions: Are the criteria used to define “literature” static or fluid? If the former, who defines these criteria, and what are they? If the latter, can’t anything potentially count as “literature”? Where, and how, do you draw the lines? What are the implications of all this for someone taking a “literature” course?

REFLECTIONSThis exercise works very well on the first day of class. Students do not expect to be confronted with such a question—one they often assume is predefined but quickly discover is much more open and complicated. However, the na-ture of the exercise allows them to explore the topic lightheartedly and build a sense of teamwork. They quickly get to know each other’s personalities by the way each student responds to the question (aesthetically “conservative” students are likely to argue against the photograph or train schedule as lit-erature, while more aesthetically “liberal” students are likely to argue for it), so it also works well as an icebreaker exercise. Indeed, I always include a pho-tograph—in which I am pictured—as one of the examples. During group discussion, I choose this example last and use it to move into an informal introduction of myself to the class. They realize that their professor is a per-son, too!

“What is ‘Literature’?” is particularly suited to introductory classes, and works with syllabuses that include primarily canonical texts, nonca-nonical texts, or a mixture of both. Including excerpts from both canoni-cal and noncanonical texts in the examples you give out can help students think about gradations of “literary” status even among the works they de-cide count as “literature.” I typically begin the exercise by stating, “This is a literature class, but what is ‘literature’?” This helps students realize that unlike the definitions of many other disciplines (psychology, accounting, medicine, law), the very definition and discipline of “literature” is up for discussion. This recognition is eye- opening and empowering: students un-derstand that they have the power to question the status and value of every-thing they will read during the semester and that this questioning is crucial to any literature course. In short, it prepares and excites them for the chal-lenges to come.

For example, in one class I distributed a musical score of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, a Nike sneaker advertisement, Wordsworth’s “Lines Com-posed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” the first paragraph of Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” a comic book, a train schedule, and a photograph taken at my recent family reunion. I asked each group to argue whether their example was “literature,” based on specific criteria that they were to develop. The arguments that the groups offered were based on

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Is This Book Literature? | 223

interesting criteria: whether the example contained “language,” whether it was “fictional” but also expressed something “true,” and whether there was something “aesthetic” or “artistic” about it. One group even noted that their example was a work of literature because it was “intertextual.” These argu-ments also led naturally to discussions of what these terms mean.

I found that the line between “literature” and “not literature” was most difficult to draw when the example involved something informational or utilitarian or when the example contained no words (for example, the visual or musical examples). In this particular experiment, the students ultimately deemed all the texts “literature” except for the family reunion photograph and the train schedule. What was most important, of course, was the pro-cess, which left students with an appreciation not only for the immense dif-ficulty of defining what literature is but also for the valuable questions about truth, fiction, and art that such an endeavor provides.

Is This Book Literature?Lydia G. Fash

A hands- on exercise that encourages students to consider the label “litera-ture.”

Genre: fictionCourse Level: anyStudent Difficulty: easyTeacher Preparation: mediumClass Size: anySemester Time: early or lateWriting Component: noneClose Reading: lowEstimated Time: variable, 20 to 45 minutes

EXERCISEThis exercise invites students to think about how their reactions to an unfa-miliar text are often framed, if not predicted, by cultural assumptions about what constitutes “literature.” “Is This Book Literature?” works best in classes that include at least one noncanonical text or a text from a stereotypically

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