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> We should not cheat, by calling, say, the King James Bible a work of literature. It's hard to take the article seriously when it opens like this, because it
by whakim 5y ago
> We should not cheat, by calling, say, the King James Bible a work of literature.
It's hard to take the article seriously when it opens like this, because it makes a binary distinction between literature and religion. It's trivially obvious that this isn't the case: for example, the Analects of Confucius, a work that's deeply intertwined with the spiritual practices of ancient China (see Puett's excellent To Become a God.) Not "fictional" enough? How about the even earlier Classic of Poetry, the earliest (known) Chinese text which was frequently cited by emperors and literati in their quest to hearken back to the mores of antiquity.
- tzs 5y agoIt is not making a distinction between literature and religion. It is making a distinction between fiction and nonfiction, with works that the authors intended as nonfiction counting as nonfiction regardless of whether or not they were objectively true.
- whakim 5y agoOne of my two examples was literally a collection of poetry. Not to mention that fiction/nonfiction is itself not a binary, as evidenced by many other Chinese masterworks. (I'm using early Chinese literature as examples because that's the context I'm most intimately familiar with from my graduate studies.)
- B1FF_PSUVM 5y agoI think that the Communist Manifest is an excellent piece of poetry - "All that is solid melts into air, all that is sacred is profaned, and man is at last compelled" etc - that unfortunately got over a hundred million people killed, and many times that number fubar'd ... But many clung - still cling - to that futile dream.