Literature: An Art Form
Literature is writings that are valued as works of art such as fiction, drama, poetry but different from textbooks, technical books, and journalistic work. Literature is an activity of writing or studying these works such as American literature, English literature, Telugu literature…and literature can be from a particular country or time period. The words are the tools for the writers of literature for words have a definite meaning.
Literature also refers to writings on a particular subject: There is almost a specialist literature on the internet for every aspect of crop cultivation.
Informally, literature refers to pamphlets, leaflets, brochures, and fliers. Before one travels, one reads literature, online or offline, in order to get acquainted about the place or the destination.
Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, the latest novel from the French author, mentions about literature in the current times. “Yet the special thing about literature, the major art form of a Western civilisation now ending before our own eyes, is not hard to define. Like literature, music can overwhelm you with sudden emotion, can move you to absolute sorrow or ecstasy; like literature, painting has the power to astonish, and to make you see the world through fresh eyes. But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting or repugnant. Only literature can you give access to a spirit from beyond the grave – a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you’d have in conversation with a friend. Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address a reader we do not know.”
Telugu literature is one of the subjects in graduate and post-graduate programmes offered at many universities in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Telugu literature is also one of the subjects one can opt in the civil services examinations. Telugu literature is a popular optional subject for UPSC and APPSC or TSPSC aspirants if she or he has an interest in the literature. For this an aspirant may not be a graduate or postgraduate in Telugu literature but a comprehensive knowledge of Telugu literature.
