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Question : What is literature? What are the special characteristics of English Literature? OR Give the definition of Eng. Literature and discuss the chief characteristics or the special features. Answer : Literature is a widely applied term. In its widest sense, literature means : Anything written or printed such as time-tables, catalogues, text-books, books on travel, novels etc. Generally in literature threr is a communications of feelings not facts. There are emotions and not informations. What touches our heart is literature. Writing without emotions is not literature. According to Thomas De Quincey there are two kinds of literature : 1. The Literature of knowledge and 2. The Literature of Power. Literature of Knowledge gives us information of better and wiser things. Literature of Power has power to move our hearts. It makes us more human. Gibbons History is a literature of knowledge. But Homers Illiad is a literature of power. It makes our hearts and gives us immnense joy. It is difficult to define literature but it is easy to recognize literature. When we come across Shakespeares Hamlet or Keats Odes, we can easily say that they are pieces of literature. But when we read The Times of India or Indian Express we can easily judge that they are not literature. Here are some special features or characteristics of good literature : 1. A MIRROR OF LIFE : Whatever we experience in our daily lifeis reflected into literature. Literature is the criticism of life. Personal experience is the basis of all real literature. It means literature deals with the closeness of life. Our experience, talks, habits, prejudices, convictions all these we find in literature and that is why it is called the mirror of life.

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2. ORIGINALITY : Another quality of good literature is the originality. Love, life and death are the main unchanging themes of all literature. Yet the writers discovers new ways and methods of describing them in different ways. And that is originality. Subject may be the same but the presentation must be different. Originality consists not of inventing new themes but of seeing and experiencing the old themes in a new way. 3. TECHNICAL SKILL OR CRAFTSMANSHIP : Writing is not only a matter of ideas and inspiration but also of practice and technique. Literature comes alive through creative imagination. Without this all technical skill is useless. Yet it is equally true that without technical skill no good writing is possible. The creator of a good literature must be a scholar and he must have a good knowledge of grammar. He must have vast vocabulary, a suitable style and lively acquaintance with great works of art. 4. MOARAL AWARENESS : Moral awareness means the expression of the ida of good and bad. No literature can exist without such moral awareness. A good literature is based on poetic justice. The good is rewarded and the bad is punished, victory of good over evil. 5. CONCRETENESS OR ACTUALITY : A good writer must create a sense of actuality in his readers. Every writer creates his own world of imagination. The writer has to make his ideas and imaginations concrete through the power of words. In all great literature, the writer makes the readers feel, see and experience what he describes. In Paradise Lost Miltons description of Hell is so perfect that we feel like seeing it with our own eyes. Thus, Literature has different facets of life and expresses various human emotions and having moral aptitude. It makes us more human and keeps our emotions alive. By reading literature, it stuffs us with vivid experiences of life without investing the real hours of our actual life.