Project

	the usual “Literature“ gary e. davis	February 13, 2026

Literary writers have their self-serving views, worthy of quips, wit, and sarcasm, which is good for an anthology of quotes. (I’m looking at one.) But some views are better than others. So, what’s the better view? Why prefer one view over another one? Does that matter, relative to a large-minded sense of life?: for being well, flour- ishing across the decades; suffering, but triumphing; then thriving in old age? Or, is that what “Literature” is best understood to be about? Lexicography expresses the settled view, a derived and distilled standard (M-W Unabridged), whose etymology at first focused on literacy (“knowledge of books”), colon, “literary culture,” now “archaic”—but not trivial, because historians standardly associate European modernity with the spread of literacy (being also the cause of communal Christianity, which was the inevitable result of common literacy). And the authority of that knowledge became highly cultured: “literary culture,” which easily evinces interest in the highness of that literacy, becoming the insti- tution of “Literature” in the 18th century, then retrojected back to Homer and the Holy Bible (ref.2.13, p. 2). Literature is made of “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest” (M-W). All other senses are taxonomical: genres, ethnic lineages, common senses. The soul of it all is excellence of lasting ideas, which would be trans-generic and trans-ethnic. That is a conceptuality of being literary, being philologically interesting. But essential humaneness or humanity of literary appeal is concealed by aesthetic framing, typified by the Encylopedia Britannica article on Literature, which is focused on “imaginative works…of…perceived aesthetic excellence,” though the article usefully notes that “definitions of the word literature tend to be circular” because voices already granted Literary authority are standardly the sources defining ‘literature’ relative to given influence of their sensibility. The appeal of a high scope of sensibility through writing (and rhetorical mastery) is what is called “literary,” and its works comprise the institutions of “Literature.” In any case, a strong focus on writing (which E. Brit. displays) doesn’t yet appre- ciate an idealizing humanity (or manifold humanities) in there being texted Value. The Medium is not The Message: Being Literary depends on the insightful Values expressed, not conformance to standard forms or genres. (I’ll return to a notion of Literary Value in an upcoming section.) The E.Brit. authors want to avoid giving too much primacy to writing because “one may speak of ‘oral literature’ or ‘the literature of preliterate peoples’”; but the preliterate people wouldn’t speak about a literature. Literary inquiry projects modern framing into a way of life which waa writing through speech (as I men- tioned earlier: “In principle, authentic speech is a kind of writing”), preserved by oral re-“texting” across generations as received storying (e.g., “the Homeric Question” about the oral genealogy of The Odyssey). The sense of received storying for listeners and readers is that the present voice is transmissive of lineage, hermeneutical, implicitly expressing a given legacy of authoriality through presence of a present authorship, i.e., authorial presencing as lineal messaging through a channeling messenger (authorship), like Hermes channeling authorial gods, i.e., displaced genius: Given authoriality of the good* ancestor having transgenerational Value (“Holy Spirit”). The E.Brit. authorship (having its genealogy of editorial contributions) says “the words… are there solely because of the craft of writing,” but said after distinguishing orality of literary craft from textualization. So, actually both crafts express voice, whose “writing” is rhetorical mastery of narrative creativity (beyond imagination, performed through mastery of forms and timing). Though Literature is “beyond ‘mere’ pleasure” (E. Brit.), it’s also beyond “criti- cizing and affirming cultural values,” because the scope of life is more than cultural. The humanity of our lives is deeply personal, social, and conceptual as well. The scope of “Literature” is all of Our humanity, expressed through rhetorical mastery.

next—> creating novel wilderness

 

Be fair. © 2026, gary e. davis