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LiteratureLiteratureFor example, the literature of stamp collecting includes:
However, as an art form, literature is written art: works, either on verse or prose, that stem from a creative process.
As with every art form, what is and is not art is matter of debate, and changes with time and space.
In the last 50 years in America, however, a movement has developed in academia to systematize the teaching of the craft of writing as art. This movement, made popular by author and teacher [John Gardner]?, is centered around the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programs at many major American universities. The most famous of these programs, the University of Iowa MFA, has been the home to and alma mater of some of the great voices of the last half century in American Literature. John Irving, [James Alan McPhereson]?, Kurt Vonnegut, [Ethan Canan]? and [David Foster Wallace]? have all been associated with the program at one time or another.
The influence that the "Iowa School" has had on writing has been the source of some controversy. Many critics contend that such programs have created a walled garden for academic writers, distancing the notion of the "literary" from what is perceived as "popular." It has also been argued, frequently in the [New York Times Review of Books]?, that a progressive sameness has taken hold in the literary short story popularized by Iowa and frequently seen in such magazines as Ploughshares? or the [Iowa Review]?. Some blame this sameness and potential degradation on the MFA system itself.
The MFA system centers around a class model known as "the workshop." A workshop is an organized peer review system for the writing of literature. As the MFA idea has taken hold, the workshop has become the centerpiece of modern literary education.
The listing that follows doesn't mean that every work in that category is a work of art.
Forms
Genres
Literary figures (note that many of these figures will fit in more than one category. If an author is not listed in every relevant place, please feel free to correct it)
Also see cultural movements for literary movements.