While a literary work most commonly refers to a written text, the study of literature can consider a literary text as anything that conveys a set of meanings to the person who examines it.
You might have thought that texts were limited to written materials, such as books, magazines, and newspapers (print or digital). Those items are indeed texts—but so are movies, paintings, television shows, songs, political cartoons, online materials, advertisements, maps, works of art, and even rooms full of people. If we can look at something, explore it, find layers of meaning in it, and draw information and conclusions from it, we’re looking at a text.
For the purposes of this class and the following discussion, the term “literary text” will refer to a short story, novel, poem, play, or film.
Attribution
“What is a Text?” in The Word on College Reading and Writing by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
For this discussion, please respond to the following questions:
Examining your experience as a reader, identify at least three literary texts that have made an impression on you. For each text, list the following:
title, author, date of publication, and any other citation information you can find; and
when you read the text and for what purpose.
Choose a favorite text and explain why it made an impression on you. In one or two well-composed paragraphs, address the following:
Why was it impactful?
How did it make you feel?
What did you learn from reading it?
Do you think it can be classified as literature? Why or why not?
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