The latest visit to the archives prompted me to think about what constitutes literature. Are words necessary to produce a literary work? Such a question never crossed my mind because I had assumed that all books had words, or at least symbols or pictures to convey the author’s message. Lafayette College, however, owns a chapter of Alice in Wonderland that has no words. The book is a collection of colorful pages. No words. No images. No symbols. I am not sure that anyone would be able to tell that it represents chapter five of the book except for the label at the beginning.
According to the dictionary on the dashboard of my Apple computer, literature is defined as, “written works, esp. those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit” or “books and writing published on a particular subject.” The key words here are written and writing, which this book lacked. No common message was conveyed. No story was told. The pages were beautiful and they were art, but I do not think the collection was an example of literature.
Literature is made up of language and language “implies boundaries. A word spoken creates a dog, a rabbit, a man. It fixes their nature before our eyes” (The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature). Did chapter five speak to you or were you as equally perplexed as I?
Unfortunately, chapter 5 didn’t speak to me either. The art was pretty but so abstract that, although it was up for interpretation, I couldn’t interpret anything because I couldn’t recognize anything in it. I feel like literature would be something expressing an idea that many people can reflect on. When you can’t make sense of anything that’s in the literature, then it can’t constitute literature because the idea is too abstract and nobody knows what the author is trying to communicate.
I think that words need to be present to constitute literature. I would say what we saw in the archives were works of art.
I believe one of the things mentioned during that class was the boundary between literature and art, and how those books blurred and crossed that border. The Alice in Wonderland book definitely stood on the side of art, but it was also an artist interpretation of literature, which is where the line thins.