hello everyone and very like to meet you in this series of lectures which tend to cover the syllabus of first year lmd level here from B University so uh these lectures okay represent uh a kind of General introduction right and overview about literature in general without specifying right American or British or African or any other okay type or Trend in literature so we start with this lecture uh by introducing uh the background of this field of this ocean of knowledge which is called literature so when we say literature of course we all remember the stories
short stories play and so on so that's why as we are in our daily life always in touch with these uh forms of art we need to have an idea about right the origin of this field which is literature in fact uh if we trace the origin of the word literature we find that it is derived from the Latin word L okay l so literature is taken or derived from from the word letter which means letter all right letter means here we mean that element of the alphabet of the alphabet also we have another related
word to uh the word lator which is also originated in the Latin language it is literatus literatus here means or refers to man who is notable for his uh knowledge and cultivation and cultivation so as you see here there is a very obvious and strong link between literature and uh letter and education and literacy okay and literacy all right so the field is directly and rooted directly to literacy and also cultivation good now as you know the module also okay is called either literature or also sometimes we call it literary text literary text so we
need also to decipher right or decode uh the origin or the meaning uh of this word text uh now after uh reading okay about this word we can discover that a text is taken from the word or is raed to what textile it is relate to the word textile okay texti here means of course fabric fabric mean here piece of cloth all right piece of cloth now what made this analogy between text and fabric or cloth uh now just as uh fabric right is made uh of uh group of threads okay or uh just as
threads form to us right fabric right single threads form us fac so also likewise sentences and words all right form to as a meaningful and coherent text and coherent text so as you see here we have a clear link between text textile fabric clear so where are these these okay Notions on the board we have first from the Latin word l L which means letter right which means letter then we have the word text clear text is taken from orated to textile which means fabric fabric okay which means fabric good this is concerning the origin
of the two terms or words literature and text now how about the definition of literat okay in itself this uh wide field of knowledge literature now when you read uh about literature and its definition the different sources and in the different encyclopedias you feel sometimes as if you are okay unsatisfied with these definitions which may seem sometimes vague right or sometimes have that kind of bias when focusing on particular our notion within that okay large and huge field of knowledge this of course because that every uh theorist or every I don't know educator tries to
Define literature from uh the perspective of his own interest C of his own interest uh someone may Define it from the uh perspective of I don't know of four another one from perspective of its purpose and objective another definition right uh May Define it from the angle of I don't know uh okay angle of psychology all right another one from the angle of aesthetic beauty of the field and so on and so forth that's why we find that these definitions we can say they are scattered okay and sometimes they confuse the reader because he feels
that okay they don't really offer that comprehensive view about this huge right uh field of knowledge good but usually okay critics and Educators okay introduce two uh different meanings all right uh for literat we have a broad definition General and a broad definition about literature in general and we have one which is academic and very you can say relevant to uh that notion and that concept we are familiar with now let's start the first one which is the broad of literature now Scholars and Educators Define literature as all what is written and all what is
in print so with regard to this uh broad definition right okay and with this broad sense of the word when I say literature I mean all what is written whether it is informative or imaginative all right example this uh definition okay uh which says that is is all what is in print includes what includes uh text books history books books of cooking stories yes short stories uh newspapers magazines medical prescriptions Diaries inventories telone books so all what is written right according to this broad definition is considered literat all right is considered literat this is generally
speaking and broadly speaking about the word literature from this General okay definition of the word there is also another definition all right which is you can say more academic more specific and more to uh that field right of art we are familiar with okay field of art we are familiar with now usually we uh Define literature right which we are concerned with in this uh course okay of first LM right level uh in this course we say we are going to literature or literary text we mean what we mean the that or any text any
text by the way whether it is written or or okay any text which is characterized by three main features three main features okay first this text should be artistic or static clear it means it must have that uh sense of beauty right in its body and in its Essence it's not meant to to inform it's not meant to teach hourly okay but it is meant it is produced mainly to WR uh create that sense of beauty okay in that piece of writing clear the Peace of writing so this is number one which is Artistic or
is artistic or aesthetic number two this text also should be characterized by being imaginative imaginative it is created out of the writer's imagination right imagination whether totally imaginative like science fiction or relatively imaginative example sometimes it can be mixture of reality and fiction right and Imagination clear and sometimes also it is sted from reality but it is Tainted or seasoned also with that imaginative uh process of you can say beautification of uh this of this art of this piece of writing clear it should be imaginative third feature or characteristic for this text to consider it
uh in the exact sense of the word literature is that it must be or it should be creative creative it means it is created by writer clear his own creation not only a copy right not only an imitation right not only a kind of informative reporting of something which is rigid no it is created right it is created and it is made right artfully and skillfully by this artist right by this artist so uh literat generally it means it has two meanings literat the first meaning is general which means all what is great second one
according to the exact sense of the word okay I mean the field we are studying now we are introducing now okay here it means any text was all all written but often it's it is written as we now okay any text okay that is is thetic is thetic it means artistic all right also imaginative and also creative and also cre so these three qualities Define okay and characterize uh any text to be considered literat in the exact sense of the word all right means the field the branch we are stud now in these lectures uh
so in fact after reading many many definitions of uh Scholars and Educators as I told you before but I couldn't find a very comprehensive and complete right and pertinent definition as most of these definition books only on a particular uh Point okay of interest for every definer all right but I uh came across a very interesting right uh definition which is introduced by the educator Florence deak Florence Florence sorry deak who defined literature in his book which is entitled in defense of literature as follows he he wrote literature goes beyond life it is Art it
is an imaginative creation that can tell truths gracefully subtly through narrative poetry and the movement of characters on a stage on a stage so as we see here he mentioned the three axes which characterize this field of knowledge okay which are when he said it is Art he refers to Artistic it is imaginative creation creation he said creation he means here uh creating he means creative all right so uh this is uh generally all what we can say about the definition of uh liter right uh and how it can be defined different ly all right
differently according to uh the uh okay what covers what it covers all right in terms of uh what is written purely written or what is considered as body of writing this is generally speaking and also in terms of that specific and particular right field of knowledge we are covering now in our lectures here we said okay it must be characterized with being athetic imaginative and creative good now going to Second element or section in this lect which is forms of literature forms of literature now as we have heard now okay that literature has okay first
written form all right written form clear it's body of writing first okay a text or written text usually which is certain qualities now the first form is written form but also it has another form which is the oral or the verbal form the verbal or the oral form and this form is the what spread mainly in developing countries especially for example we have we can mention the example of the African okay countries uh in which their literary Heritage okay a past from one generation to another okay just early or verbally okay early or verbally so
we have here we have here two main forms written form okay and the or form which predates the written one before it before one okay also if we uh you can say consider those uh pictures those Engravings those drawings of Prehistoric Age all right which uh introduce or represent or symbolize okay uh piece of literature okay which is engraved on Stones here also we can consider it as another form which is the pictorial form pictorial form okay because here we have pictures which tell stories which represent okay or replace a piece of narrative all right
through these pictures and so on so we have written form or form pictorial form three Jers clear and this one the last one also is considered the earliest form of literature okay since the Stone Age the Stone Age right today as you know also uh critics consider uh films as another genre of literature another genre of literature so films if we regard their form we find that they are combination of what uh pictorial and verbal or acoustic okay or oral okay pictorial and verbal they have what we call an audio visual form okay audio visual
form so this is the first form okay of literature or the mod the modern form of literature we uh we see today okay in different uh media on different media so let's late and say lerat has now four forms it is written it can be oral it can be pictorial and also it can be audio visual like films like films which combine all right uh both the acoustic or the verbal and the pictorial together so write this we have forms orator we have forms number one we said it is written the commonest the wi used
and the Brest one is waiting for number two it is uh oral or or verbal okay this also reminds us of what we callor theator right in African literature it is how uh according to African Traditions okay the stories were passed from one generation to another just early okay early this tradition of recounting stories is called AA okay a only the narration of or recounting of stories from one to another just only is called a also third form we said it is pictorial pictorial okay like uh the drawings and like also the prehistoric uh Engravings
and so on and the fourth one is the audio visual it's one audio visual form like as we have in films and and movies so we stop here for this uh first part of our introduction because this production is a bit long and it requires uh some thorough details about every section in it to uh clearly all right uh clarify all right the essence of this field of knowledge before we uh dive more deeply into its jle its schools it and its movements and so on so we first to have an idea about its background
its origin and also its different uh specificities so we stop here thank you so much and see you in another uh video another lecture always about our module literature and our subject literature so thank you so much
