Cabo talked about Caleb's book in his first article. At that time, he only talked about the first chapter, that is, "What is theory?" After a long pause, I came back to talk about this book because I didn't study hard enough. I won't bother here. Let's go straight to today's topic, which is "What is literature?" This topic is a link between the past and the future for me. From the perspective of representation, we need a representation path to talk about what literature is. Caleb talked about it at the end of this chapter, so I'll explain it backwards. What is the literature proposed by Culler? This problem is not really to define literature, but because literature is increasingly becoming an important criticism method, and many theories highlight its literariness, so literary interpretation is prevalent, thinking about the meaning of text expression, paying attention to the mechanism of meaning generation, exploring the situation of happy creation and so on. However, many theorists have not given a generally accepted concept to literature so far, and there are disputes about the definition, characteristics, functions of literature itself and its relationship with readers' behavior. So "What is literature?" In this kind of importance and complexity, I can't help appearing. 1. Talking about "what is literature" is not the central issue of literary theory (mainly for two reasons) 1. In the last article, Caleb's theoretical thought was expounded. He believes that the theory itself combines philosophy, linguistics, history, political theory, psychoanalysis and many other aspects. Theorists don't need to bother to analyze whether the text is literature or not. The two are inseparable, and they are guilty of cutting and confusing. In addition, non-literature can also be expounded and studied by literary methods. 2. There is literariness in non-literary phenomena. Literary works all adopt the mode of explaining history, that is, the principle of story development logic: how stories show why things happen, and how to link the initial scene, later development and results in a reasonable way. The turn of storytelling language has revived the history of thought, and the language is no longer rigid, but more plot and communication. It is not difficult to find that the mode of making history clear is the mode of literary narration. With theorists paying more and more attention to rhetoric, rhetoric is not limited to the literary field, but also can be introduced into the non-literary field. This makes the distinction between literature and non-literature more complicated. Non-literature contains more and more literariness, which also reflects the importance of literature, indicating that the concept of literature is still necessary. Second, what is literature? A difficult question to answer. 1. People with different knowledge levels can give different answers. For example, telling children that literature is stories, poems and plays. It needs a professional analysis by literary theorists, but the result is vague and difficult to determine, because this is a problem that both sides understand each other, but both understand very vaguely. It can be translated into such a question: What are the outstanding features of literary works? This is the problem discussed in The Basic Mountain of Defining Literary Concepts. Since it is difficult to define literature directly, can we put it another way, for example, what are the characteristics of literary works, which implies an undefined concept, that is, literature? How can we explain literary works? Many people are in a dilemma. This is really a difficult question to answer, because the form and length of literary works are different. Some unusual works actually belong to the category of literature, while some common works are not among the literary works. How to define what literature is in one sentence? 4. With a historical perspective, the problem becomes more complicated. Literature is translated from the English word literature, which means "writing" since the 25th century. It is used in language and rhetoric, including speeches, sermons, history and philosophy. Modern literature refers to the study of texts as literature in the last 200 years. The problem is complicated, and Kale doesn't want to delve into it. He simply came to a conclusion that "literature is a work that any particular society considers to be literature, that is, any text that is judged by culture and can be counted as a literary work". Third, what can be defined as literature? When answering the question "this", I have moved to the question "that". 1. Kale uses the metaphor of "weeds" to talk about what literature is. What is a weed again? What is literature? We want to know what weeds are, so we try to find the characteristics of weeds in gardens and fields. This is not a good method. Since weeds are "miscellaneous" grasses, how can they have common visual characteristics? By the time you find it, it is estimated that all the weeds have been reborn, so it is just a futile effort. In fact, weeds are plants that garden owners don't want to plant in their own gardens. This depends on the personal preferences of the owners of different gardens, not on generalizations, but on specific environmental requirements to define what weeds are. The same goes for literature, don't try to find its commonness in form; What we should do is to consider and study comprehensively from the historical, social and perhaps psychological perspectives. 2. The definition of literature needs special context or special conditions to attract readers' attention and imagination. For example, Kale said, "We dance in a circle and guess puzzles. We sit in it secretly and know everything." An important prerequisite for interpreting this sentence is to judge the context or conditions of this sentence. Will it be a riddle? Could it be an advertisement for something called a secret? It is precisely because we are not sure of its true context that it is possible to be like literature. Uncertainty means that anything is possible. On the contrary, if we are quite sure that this sentence is extracted from the menu, then we don't regard it as the possibility space of literature. Culler's conclusion is that "if literature is a language divorced from context and other functions and purposes, then it constitutes the context itself". Super protection means that participants cooperate with each other, so that it is possible to further communicate and communicate in a discourse domain. Literary narration is a kind of "narrative display text", and the relationship between discourse and audience lies in its "talkability" rather than the information it conveys. Worth listening to is the most critical premise, influential, attractive, entertaining readers or satisfying. Such a definition is also difficult. Do other works exclude this super-protective cooperative principle? Helpless, Calais concluded: "We can understand literary works as languages with certain attributes or characteristics. We can also regard literature as the creation of procedures or the result of some kind of attention. No one perspective can successfully cover all other perspectives, so you must constantly change your position between the two. " Fourth, introduce five theorists' exposition on the essence of literature. Literature is the "outstanding" of language. Emphasize the uniqueness of language, such as rhyming poems. This view also has limitations, because when some texts are not regarded as literature, even if they have their own characteristics, they are often ignored. Only by treating texts according to the framework of literature can we notice their different styles. 2. Literature is the synthesis of language. Literature is a language that combines various elements and components in a text in a complex relationship. For example, a rhyme will connect two unrelated words to imagine. The defect is that it is not literature itself that contains this synthesis, but readers often try to find a comprehensive, harmonious, tense or uncoordinated relationship. 3. Literature is fiction. Fiction is the expression form of literature, and words have a special relationship with the world. Because the characters, time and events in literary works are far from reality. This involves that what the author thinks is definitely different from what the presenter says, which involves how to interpret the author's text. This undoubtedly creates countless imaginable spaces, making the relationship between works and the real world an interpretable problem, and the fiction of literature distinguishes its language from that in other contexts. 4. Literature is the object of aesthetics. Apply Kant's aesthetic thought, that is, aesthetics is a bridge connecting the material world and the conceptual world. Literature also has this function, which realizes the possibility of combining material and spirit by integrating the form and spiritual connotation acting on the senses. In this way, readers are prompted to think about the internal relationship between form and content. The disadvantage is that the explanation in this paper is still applicable to other works. 5. Literature is the construction of interwoven texts or self-refraction. Intertextuality means that a work is shaped by other works, and it is the previous works that make its existence possible, so it can be said that it is in intertextuality. Self-refraction means that literature is the author's practice of trying to improve or update literature, which includes refraction of literature. The defect is that it is not excluded that other works also have this feature, such as advertisements. V. Evolution history of literary function 1.80. In the 1990s, literature was regarded as a historical and ideological category, and its social and political functions were considered. In Britain in the19th century, literature was regarded as a language tool to educate people, and it also played the role of replacing religion, that is, uniting various social forces. 2. Literature is universal. Benedict Anderson believes that "the novel silently and constantly goes deep into the truth and silently creates an extraordinary community belief, which is the characteristic of modern countries." The more we emphasize the universality of literature, the greater its nationality. This is conducive to the formation of social morality and environment. 3. Literature is a special kind of work. The subjectivity of literature is not affected by the social environment, and all classes can get pleasure through works. Some people criticize this view as confusing the working class, cheating and an ideological tool. These are two diametrically opposed views, that is, literature is a means of ideology and a tool to make it collapse. The relationship between literature and behavior 1. Literature is a kind of activity form different from politics and society. It is only a passive acceptance or detachment of unreasonable reality. But it is also dangerous, because it urges people to deconstruct those in power and society. For example, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin contributed to the revolution against slavery. 2. Interaction between literary role and narrator's identity. 3. Literature is the activity of cultural elites. It is cultural capital. 4. Literature is a paradoxical and specious mechanism. Literature is an artistic mechanism to expose and criticize its own limitations. Abstract: Literature is not only the voice of culture, but also the information of culture. It is not only a powerful driving force, but also a cultural capital. It is a work that not only needs readers to understand, but also can guide readers into the question of meaning. To sum up, literature is a unique theory, which makes more and more scholars read and interpret works as literary works. The form of literature has changed not only for the author, but also for the way readers intervene in society. The sociality, daily life and historicity of literature are called a paradigm similar to philosophical thinking, but different from philosophical theory.