Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Traditional festivals - The function of literature

The function of literature

The three basic social functions of literature are cognitive function, educational function and aesthetic function. Literary aesthetic education acts on the reading subject through intuition. All readers who enter the aesthetic realm hold the mentality of "inaction" and regard literary works as independent and isolated images.

This does not contain any practical purpose or scientific understanding. Because of this, the aesthetic function of literature is completely different from the cognitive function and educational function of literature.

Literature refers to the art of using language to vividly reflect the objective reality, including drama, poetry, novels, essays and so on. It is an important manifestation of culture, which expresses inner feelings in different forms (called genres) and reproduces social life in a certain period and region.

In addition to external, practical and utilitarian values, literature also has internal, seemingly useless and utilitarian values, that is, spiritual values.

Generalized information literature is an art that reflects the objective reality and expresses the writer's inner world with language and words as tools, including poetry, prose, novels, plays, 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 China's The Book of Songs, Indian Ramayana and ancient Greek Ilion Ji.

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.

Literature is the art of language, an important embodiment of social culture and beauty. Literary works are works that writers express their unique spiritual world with unique language art. Without these two unique characteristics, there would be no real literary works. An outstanding writer is a hero in the spiritual world of a nation.

Literature represents the art and wisdom of a nation. Literature is a subject that expresses social life and psychological activities in words, and belongs to the category of social ideology.

References:

Literature-Baidu Encyclopedia