litreture experts!Please help me with this asap!?

Question

why do we consider a text from a novel to be more litrary than a website about blackpool for instnace!

Thomas Hardy Ch1 P.5
&
a website page about Dorset in the UK

Answer 1

I'm not sure what Thomas Hardy book you're referring to but he is known for using the landscape and setting almost as another character, such as in Return of the Native. He also was living at the time and place he was writing about, unlike a random website.

Answer 2

Okay, first of all, a novel is fiction, while the website you mention sounds more like a travel guide or town information page, or a biographical page--something factual. Because you're comparing apples and oranges, the answer is going to be complex. Here we go.

There are a lot of "literary" works that are not fiction. Plato's The Republic, Emmerson's Nature, Benjamin Franklin's Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America, and so on and on and on. This establishes that fictionality is not a factor. So, onto the next factor-it's on the web.

If you run across Jane Eyre or Ulysses or The Great Gatsby on the web, does that make them any less literary? I don't think anyone can say that. Web publishing is now, also, proved not a factor.

Well, then, how about the factual nature of it? That is, because it's a site that presents facts about an area or person rather than telling a story or presenting ideas, is it less literary? This is the tricky part of the question for two reasons. First, a lot of novels, essays, articles, etc. present facts and give biographical or travel-touristy information. Second, because there is actually a push (at least in American universities) to reevaluate what should be called "literature." Letters, television shows, shopping lists, diaries, song lyrics, etc. have been presented by the revisionists as examples of "liteterature." That is, they feel that, historically, the Dead White Males of literature prevented everyone but themselves the freedom to express themselves in the "usual" manner, so the "others" of society used the only forms of expression they were allowed. (The "others" being women, blacks, Hispanics, Indians, or any other race, religion, creed, etc. that has been oppressed by a white guy!) This is a pretty new school of thought, and in some respects, it's gaining steam, but I'm not so sure about some of the stuff (shopping lists?)

This is all clear as mud, isn't it? At any rate, what I'm trying to say is that your answer is: There is no reason! There are a hundred reasons! No one really cares as long as we get to argue about it! Everyone cares because this is high culture we're discussing! (I could go on, but it's getting rather droll, don't you think?)

Answer 3

Assuming we're talking about a published novel and not something put out through a vanity press, the novel earned its place as literature. A website is more like an open letter to the world. Case in point: there is a guy with a website who insists the Earth is a cube, and that the knowledge that the Earth is round is just a conspiracy by teachers to keep us stupid. If the internet was treated like books, only 1% of it would exist.

Answer 4

Because Thomas Hardy is one of the greatest craftsman of the English language. Someone's crappy website isn't creating anything even close to literature.

The Internet is not a medium of art, but rather the sub-basement of mediocrity, housing a slushy sewer of porn.

Answer 5

There is still a misconception that anything that is published in print must be more reliable than anything on the internet. In some cases, that may absolutely be true, but in general, there's no real proof of that. There are plenty of great websites out there, and plenty of crap books.

Answer 6

because alot of people can put any old lie on the internet. Not alot people write a WHOLE book to lie. thats why i get sum facts frum the internet and then alot from books

Answer 7

because Hardy uses language creatively which means he is not just interested in factual details but employs language resources to persuade the reader.