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What is Literature?
Literature is a body of written works related by subject-matter, by language or place of origin, or by dominant cultural standards. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" (from Latin littera letter). In Western culture the most basic literary types include poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature

What is English Literature?

The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad,Vladimir Nabokov was Russian. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world. In academia, the term often labels departments and programs practicing English studies in secondary and tertiary educational systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Literature 

Definitions of Literature
1. Learning; acquaintance with letters or books.
2. The collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing; also, the whole body of literary productions or writings upon a given subject, or in reference to a particular science or branch of knowledge, or of a given country or period; as, the literature of Biblical criticism; the literature of chemistry.
3. The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge; belles-lettres.
4. The occupation, profession, or business of doing literary work. --Lamp.
Literature, in its widest sense, embraces all compositions in writing or print which preserve the results of observation, thought, or fancy; but those upon the positive sciences (mathematics, etc.) are usually excluded.
http://www.bklein.de/literature_definition.php

Literature and culture
Literature has a history, and this connects with cultural history more widely. Prose narratives were written in the 16th century, but the novel as we know it could not arise, in the absence of a literate public. The popular and very contemporary medium for narrative in the 16th century is the theatre. The earliest novels reflect a bourgeois view of the world because this is the world of the authors and their readers (working people are depicted, but patronizingly, not from inside knowledge). The growth of literacy in the Victorian era leads to enormous diversification in the subjects and settings of the novel.
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lit/history.htm


Question

1. Do you enjoy reading literature?
   Tell us about your favorite (not only novel... anything is OK).

2. Do you believe Shakespeare’s are better than Harry Potter?

3. Many adults think that valuable writings are literature and others
   (Science fiction, romance, fantasy) are not so they prevent their kids to read those writings.
   But the values keep changing. What is literature in your point?
   What features make writings valuable in your point?

4. English was lower language than Greeks or Latin until 19th century.
   The education of English was for women and people in colonies.
   English officers tried to put English spirit into the people of their colonies such as India.
   The reason why English literature became widespread was not the high value of the writings but
   the power of their country. How do you feel it? Share you feeling and thinking freely.

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