Abstract
The question ‘What is literature?’ must be pivotal in literary theory: serious scholarly interest in literature, one may reasonably assert, presupposes a correct delimitation of this phenomenon as well as an account of its central characteristics. In the first respect the task is a relatively simple one. We all know that for instance novels, poems, and plays are literature, and border-line cases such as essays and memoirs need pose no serious problem. On the contrary, they indicate that there is a border line – otherwise certain texts would not be able to straddle it.
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© 2005 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Pettersson, T. (2005). Components of Literariness: Readings of Capote’s In Cold Blood. In: Olsen, S.H., Pettersson, A. (eds) From Text to Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524170_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524170_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-54391-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-52417-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)