The concept and definition of literature

Literature is an art that uses language as a tool to reflect the objective reality and more vividly express the writer's spiritual world.

Literature is an art that uses language and words to intuitively reflect the objective reality and express the writer's inner world, including poetry, prose, novels, scripts, fables, fairy tales and other genres. It is an important literary form, which expresses inner feelings in different forms and reproduces social life in a certain period and region.

As a discipline, literature includes China language and literature, foreign language and literature and journalism and communication.

Literature belongs to one of the humanities, and keeps pace with philosophy, religion, law and politics at the top of the social structure. It originated from human thinking activities.

Oral literature first appeared, usually combined with music to form lyric poems that can be sung.

The earliest written documents are The Book of Songs by China, Ramayana by India and Ilion by ancient Greece. China's works written in words in the pre-Qin period were collectively referred to as literature, and literary works were listed separately only after Wei and Jin Dynasties.

The classification of European traditional literature theory divides literature into three categories: poetry, prose and drama. Modern literature is usually divided into four categories: poetry, novel, prose and drama.