Literature is literally "an acquaintance with
letters", as in the first sense given in the
Oxford English Dictionary (from the
Latin littera meaning "an individual written character"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of
texts or
works of art, which in Western culture are mainly
prose, both
fiction and
non-fiction,
drama and
poetry. In much, if not all of the world, texts can be
oral as well, and include such
genres as
epic,
legend,
myth,
ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and the
folktale. The word "literature" as a common noun can refer to any form of writing, such as
essays; "Literature" as a proper noun refers to a whole body of literary work.
The history of literature begins with the history of writing, in the Bronze Age of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, although the oldest literary texts date to a full millennium after the invention of writing, to the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest literary authors known by name are Ptahhotep and Enheduanna, dating to ca. the 24th and 23rd centuries BC, respectively. More about Literature...
