What is Literature?

However loosely employed, the word literature commonly carries with it, alike in the language of criticism and in that of everyday intercourse, a clear suggestion of delimitation. To me Literature is a piece of writing which, when A COMMON READER reads he feel he also wanted to write the same or would have written the same, if he would have been there at author’s place but he cannot until the author - THE CREATIVE GENIUS, gives an outlet to those sort of COMMON EXPERIENCES SHARED BY THE HUMANITY. To quote W.H. Hudson from his book ‘An Introduction to the Study of English Literature’,

“Literature is composed of those books, and of those books only, which… by reason of their subject-matter and their mode of treating it … are vital record of what men have seen in life, what they have experienced of it, what they have thought and felt about those aspects of it which have the most immediate and enduring interest for all of us.”(Page No - 10)

Hence, Literature is fundamentally an expression of life through the medium of language.