Just Books?

What is Literature? 

In simple words, literature is a group of texts that have a structure in which it is possible to express feelings. The topics could vary from one author to another, it could be politics, love, drama, terror, tragic comedy, and so on. Nowadays, the texts that are consider as literature are wider than they used to. This because the canons have drastically changed.

          In first place, canons are a collection of selected books chosen by experts in a specific subject who used to be teachers that, at the same time, happened to be clergies (Bates, 2017). Of course, these books were mostly religious texts and according to their beliefs, they would choose the books that would be used for teaching in classrooms. Books considered ‘Good’ and hence, considered as literature. Due to this, a lot of books have been rejected because they have not suited those canons.

     Comics suit the description of what is literature. They have a structure, a text, a story is told, it has a sequence. In fact, comics are a hybrid that evolved from literature, and today it is an important part of it. One example of it, is ‘Perseppolis’ In this comic, the Islamic revolution is told in a simple way, with good graphics that exemplifies the whole story seen from the point of view of a little girl. This comic is an important narration of the literature in which we can know the story of the Islamic revolution in a different way.

            Recently, music has won a Nobel prize in literature through the musician for some and poet for others, Bob Dylan. With this prize, music has been recognize as literature. In this case, words with music instead of words with graphics as in the comics. Some people have argued that music is not literature. This because of the tradition that some people want to preserve.

          In the world of literature, we also can include theater. Plays that represent the different stages of the life and the absurd of it as in ‘Waiting for Godot’, this play is an example of literature, an expression of tragic comedy of life . Theater brings to life stories that were born in someone’s imagination and make of literature a different experience.

      Poetry is an essential part of the literature. There is no doubt that poetry is literature in the whole extension of the word. Poems like ´ Act of union ´ describing in a different way the birth of a baby, encoding that moment, using the iceberg theory, gives to the poem a different aspect, apart from the love we are used to.

     As a conclusion, literature embodies different texts that are chosen by experts and hold as many genres and styles as we can imagine. It is more than books, more than poetry. It surrounds us wherever we are.

     Throughout the times, books have been classified in different ways depending on the periods of time. These different periods have had some ‘experts’ such as educators or religious people who classified books according to the values that represented the period of the moment. These classifications that canonize the books, left other important books out of the readers’ view. For instance, comics could not be part of the canonization for an educator who is religious. But the time evolves, and classifications too. For Aaron Meskin, who considers comics as literature, they could be taken into account for a ‘canonization’ since there’s evidence that comics evidently are literature, an evolution of it. Comics are a hybrid that contains images and text, they have a structure that is organized in sequences, and are original. A very good example of this is ‘Fun Home’.

        In this comic we can see the perception of Alison about her father. In the first chapters, the author relates the relationship between her father and the rest of the family, that are treated as furniture as said by Alison. The comic shows a parallel between Alison who wants to come out and Bruce who has always tried to hide. Every chapter develops an idea that contributes to the story. This story follows a sequence, it is original in its description. It goes from past to present in order to show memories. The drawings show several details such as names of books, furniture and physical features of the characters. ‘Fun Home’  fixed perfectly into the description about what it is literature, not just for its originality and the structure, but also for the most important, the story that is describe.