/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16897422]

When you get down to it, what is the fundamental purpose of literature? Is art with a "bad" message necessarily worse art than art with a "good" message?

[Anonymous No.16897446]

>the fundamental purpose
Why do you assume there is only one purpose and not many?

[Anonymous No.16897449]

>>16897422
No. Form = Content. wtf even is a bad message? quality is about execution more than anything.

[Anonymous No.16897450]

Literature became pointless and obsolete after movies added sound.

[Anonymous No.16897454]

>>16897446
Even so, there must be some way to sort legitimate purposes from illegitimate ones.

[Anonymous No.16897462]

>>16897450
Why? I mean, even before that you could just have someone read out loud to you.

[Anonymous No.16897465]

>>16897450
t. Watcher of the White Clown

[Anonymous No.16897502]

>message
art is for those who percieve the joy of transcendent beauty. its pretty shapes when you get down to it. its never ever something stupid and earthly like a -ewewwwewwwewww- message

[Anonymous No.16897527]

>>16897422
>what is the fundamental purpose of literature?

Unironically to get lucky with those long-legged socialists.

[Anonymous No.16897532]

>>16897422
Aesthetic pleasure.

[Anonymous No.16897564]

>>16897502
Based. However the perfection of transcendent storytelling allows for enjoyment at all levels of understanding. People who can't perceive the totality can still enjoy it as harmless 'good vs. evil' entertainment. Truth resonates with people regardless of their perception.

But for those with the eyes to see it, it reveals multiple new layers that were previously unseen. Great works are holographic in a sense

[Anonymous No.16897587]

>>16897450
This is one of the ugliest posts I’ve ever read on this board.

[Anonymous No.16897595]

It’s fundamental purpose is entertainment.

[Anonymous No.16897618]

>>16897450
Movies became obsolete after the advent of radio

[Anonymous No.16897623]

>>16897422
Define good.
Define bad.
Define art.
Define literature.
Define purpose.

[Anonymous No.16897832]

>>16897564
>Truth resonates with people regardless of their perception.
definitely agree that even if the artist or the audience is wrong about why art is good, the beauty transcends that and makes the thing good. but
>People who can't perceive the totality can still enjoy it as harmless 'good vs. evil' entertainment
i still think what theyre enjoying there is the "truth" or the "divine beauty" and not harmless good vs evil entertainment. i dont believe in different levels of understanding. i think theres that resonation felt by everyone, and than theres all the other functionalities, ideologies, moralities that people force onto it that just arent what the thing is about. you can either groove with it or you cant

[Anonymous No.16899291]

>>16897422
Literature is an abyss

[Anonymous No.16899336]

The wonderful thing about art is that it allows us to experience other realities. That is the point imo. For literature it is particularly important because it deals with language, because it is language. Language forms our reality in many ways because people mistake the sign for the signified, the map for the territory. By experiencing language in new ways, or rather, to read about reality in a way that we have previously ignored or never imagined, we are opened up in an almost spiritual manner. And this is a never ending process, new signs form to be broken, new relationships made to destroy and rebuild. The human aspect of striving is built into our art as we continually rebuild the way we perceive the world. To not be able to experience this would lessen the human experience greatly.

From that metric, no art is good or bad, it is just art that expands us in some way. I feel like this is almost another question though, one of governments and societies and social health. Plato said good art could only nourish society and all else should be prohibited. Maybe he was right, there is logic to it.

[Anonymous No.16899385]

>>16899336
>The other strange thing about language is that while it gives things an initial identity, it also obscures that identity over time.
>The problem is that the repeated use of the word swallows the thingness of water so that it is nearly lost. Language, Percy writes, “operates not only as a means of knowing but also as a means of concealment.” Objects can become “encrusted by a symbolic simulacrum”—a simulacrum that can only be broken (temporarily) by accident or art.
>Percy’s early novels are peopled with wanderers who try to do just that. In The Moviegoer, for example, Binx Bolling is “adrift,” struck by a feeling of “malaise”—a sense that he is out of place in the world and the world is increasingly lost to him. So he seeks out “rotations.” These are experiences of the world (or what Binx calls “the new”) “beyond the expectation of the experience of the new”: “For example, taking one’s first trip to Taxco would not be a rotation, or no more than a very ordinary rotation; but getting lost on the way and discovering a hidden valley would be.” This is because it would lead to an experience of the “hidden valley” that would be new in a way it wouldn’t otherwise be because of its sudden discovery, wholly unexpected, temporarily breaking through the everydayness of life.
>But in later novels, Percy presents us with another solution—at once more successful and horrifying: become part of the machine by numbing one’s sense of self through technology (Love in the Ruins) or drugs (Thanatos Syndrome). In short, give into death; and one wonders if this isn’t exactly what is happening across America, as news of families and towns ravished by opioids grabs headlines. Percy rightly saw that when faced with a deepening sense of loneliness and despair, death can seem like a gift.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/walker-percy-ponders-the-joy-and-risk-of-naming-the-world/

[Anonymous No.16899396]

>>16899385
>thingness of water
for the lazy who don't read the whole article, this phrase makes sense in the context of Helen Keller discovering language.

i had meant to edit this as 'thingness of [word]' but forgot

[Anonymous No.16899446]

>>16899385
>>The other strange thing about language is that while it gives things an initial identity, it also obscures that identity over time.

You can take any example from your own life to see how this works. How deeply do you consider the things or people you encounter? Language is a placeholder for a vast amount of detail, detail that we cast off because only God could take into account all details at once, so we filter reality. Your friend, Bob. He is Bob. But think of all the things he is, or has been, or will be. There is so much to that thing called Bob, yet you use one word to name him, and now you really only consider one flat aspect of him. Naming things necessarily strips detail, and it is through art that we remind ourselves of some of the details we lose in our everyday reality.

I can't remember who, but someone said poetry is there to remind us of all we have forgotten [paraphrased, probably butchered]. It rings true.

[Anonymous No.16899533]

It has only the purpose you give it. Fundamentally its only purpose is to make you feel the deepest of all your emotions. There is no divine greater goal for it. I could make that point with life, but I'd be called gay on this board lol.

[Anonymous No.16899840]

literature still offers a unique experience in its method of imprinting ideas
its pure language

[Anonymous No.16899955]

>>16897527
Based and Obamapilled