A Window, A Light...

I was observing a conversation (taking place online) the other day between Kay and some other chump on Plurk (which is a little like Twitter + Facebook, I guess) who was asserting that Tolkien and, indeed, most fantasy can't be considered literature because it doesn't meet the right criteria. And that we needed to respect her authority on this matter because she's in college for an English degree and she's spent an entire semester learning about this. 

Be still, my beating heart. 

That's pretty much like me sitting at a bar and having a nice pint of something and overhearing someone announce in no uncertain terms that my parentage is up for debate and that I likely wear last season's women's underwear.* I pretty much spent the rest of that morning pacing back and forth, ranting aloud. The person in question brought up issues of Tolkien not being suitable for the literary canon along with Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and then going over their criteria. 

I looked it up. Said chump deleted the thread, but here they were : 

1) Commentary on society at large or events at the time/in the past 2) Contributes to a literary movement IE. Romanticism, Realism, so on. 3) Significant impact on society at large

Personally, I think the whole thing is bunk. Canon is something that, afaict, allows cultural experts to dictate what someone needs to read in order to be considered cultured, ie, part of the educated mono-culture which has been in decline since it was discovered that subaltern groups can read and write.** Canon's just a tool like any other, really, just like genres are. Canon, the term 'literature', and genres are just things we use to help us talk about writing, and we shouldn't let them control us. I see people frequently forget that, though, and act like these things are divinely received wisdom. Whoops. You've got it backwards, friends. 

Even through those criteria, almost anything that you see written still falls under those criteria though, depending on how you want to interpret it. Hunger Games? Commentary. Contributes to a literary movement? Children's lit? A genre? Dystopian fiction? Too broad. I feel like she should have taken better notes, but this is what she gave us to work with. Significant impact on society at large! That's my favorite. Oh my. To say that Tolkien hasn't had an impact on society at large is laughable. But! Even terribly written work can do that. Don't make that a criteria for literature unless you want to let 50 Shades of Gray and Twilight in, since those are big in the White Person Accepted Media Sphere while other, terrifically written books by subaltern groups that have great impact on the readers and members of their attendant cultures, sub- and counter-cultures are neglected! 

The truth is, though, that words are literature. Anything written to have an effect is literature just like anything created to have an effect on people falls under the larger subheading of art. The terms and distinctions we make serve only to provide ways to meaningfully discuss the larger fields under certain headings. Using the terms like they've been used in the past to break away large parts of work from the collective and call them not worth studying loses us too much and disregards the efforts of too many trying to be heard, in my opinion, to be a moral act. 

* Is black not in anymore? It's difficult to keep up, these days. 
** After the Fact Trigger Warning : Snark.