Literary merit is a quality of written work, generally applied to the genre of literary fiction Literary fiction is a term that has come into common usage since around 1970, principally to distinguish serious fiction from the many types of genre fiction and popular fiction (i.e., paraliterature). In broad terms, literary fiction focuses more on style, psychological depth, and character, whereas mainstream commercial fiction (the page-turner). A work is said to have literary merit (to be a work of art A work of art, artwork, work or art object is a creation, such as an art object, design, architectural piece, musical work, literary composition, performance, film, conceptual art piece, or even computer program that is made and or valued primarily for an "artistic" rather than practical function. This article is concerned with the) if it is a work of quality, that is if it has some aesthetic Aesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature." Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with value. The concept of "literary merit" is practically impossible to define, and it is hard to see how such an idea can be used with any precision or consistency by policy makers, magistrates A magistrate is a judicial officer; in ancient Rome, the word magistratus denoted one of the highest government officers with judicial and executive powers. Today, in common law systems, a magistrate has limited law enforcement and administration authority. In civil law systems, a magistrate might be a judge in a superior court; the magistrate's or judges A judge, or arbiter of justice, is a lead official who presides over a court of law, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is like an umpire in a game and conducts the trial impartially and in an open court. A common response to this criticism is that, while the process of establishing literary merit is difficult, fraught with dangers, and often subjective, it is the only method currently available to separate work that has significant cultural value from work that is ephemeral.

See also

Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics Aesthetics is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature." Aesthetics is a subdiscipline of axiology, a branch of philosophy, and is closely associated with
Related articles

Aesthetics of music Traditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment of music. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy. However, many musicians, music critics, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music. In recent decades philosophers have tended to · Applied aesthetics Film combines many diverse disciplines, each of which may have their own rules of aesthetics. The aesthetics of cinematography are closely related to still photography, but the movement of the subject, or the camera and the intensities, colors, and placement of the lighting are highly important. Sound recording, editing, and mixing are other, · Architecture Architecture is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use · Art Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics · Arts criticism Arts criticism is the process of describing, analyzing, interpreting, and judging works of art . It is distinct from art criticism due to its broader remit.[citation needed] The disciplines of arts criticism can be defined by the object being considered rather than the methodology (through analysis of its philosophy): buildings (architecture · Gastronomy Gastronomy is the study of the relationship between culture and food. It is often thought erroneously that the term gastronomy refers exclusively to the art of cooking , but this is only a small part of this discipline; it cannot always be said that a cook is also a gourmet. Gastronomy studies various cultural components with food as its central · History of aesthetics (pre-20th-century) This description of the history of aesthetics before the twentieth century is based on an article from the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica · History of painting The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures, that represents a continuous, though disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, and spanning continents and millennia, the history of painting is an ongoing river of creativity, that continues into the 21st century. Until the · Humour Humour or humor is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. Many theories exist about what humour is and what social function it serves. People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. The majority of people are able to be amused, to laugh or smile at something funny, and thus they are · Literary merit · Mathematics and art Mathematics and art have a long historical relationship. The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks knew about the golden ratio, regarded as an aesthetically pleasing ratio, and incorporated it into the design of monuments including the Great Pyramid, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. There are many examples of artists who have been inspired by · Mathematical beauty Many mathematicians derive aesthetic pleasure from their work, and from mathematics in general. They express this pleasure by describing mathematics as beautiful. Sometimes mathematicians describe mathematics as an art form or, at a minimum, as a creative activity. Comparisons are often made with music and poetry. Bertrand Russell expressed his · Painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern · Philosophy of music Philosophy of music is the study of fundamental questions regarding music. The philosophical study of music has many connections with philosophical questions in metaphysics and aesthetics. Some basic questions in the philosophy of music are: · Poetry Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics · Sculpture Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard and/or plastic material, sound, and/or text and or light, commonly stone , metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded, or cast. Sculptures are often painted · Tragedy Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of Western civilization. That tradition has been ·
Concepts in aesthetics

Aesthetic emotions Aesthetic emotions refer to emotions that are felt during aesthetic activity and/or appreciation. These emotions may be of the everyday variety or may be specific to aesthetic contexts. Examples of the latter include the sublime, the beautiful, and the kitsch. In each of these respects, the emotion usually constitutes only a part of the overall · Art manifesto The Art manifesto has been a recurrent feature associated with the avant-garde in Modernism. Art manifestos are mostly extreme in their rhetoric and intended for shock value to achieve a revolutionary effect. They often address wider issues, such as the political system. Typical themes are the need for revolution, freedom and the implied or · Art object A work of art, artwork, work or art object is a creation, such as an art object, design, architectural piece, musical work, literary composition, performance, film, conceptual art piece, or even computer program that is made and or valued primarily for an "artistic" rather than practical function. This article is concerned with the · Avant-garde Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English, to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics · Beauty Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. As a cultural creation, beauty has been extremely commercialized. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is · Boring Boredom is an emotional state experienced during periods lacking activity or when individuals are uninterested in the opportunities surrounding them. The first record of the word boredom is in the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, written in 1852, in which it appears six times, although the expression to be a bore had been used in the sense of · Comedy Comedy as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse generally intended to amuse, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was · Camp Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as · Creativity Creativity is a mental and social process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations of the creative mind between existing ideas or concepts. Creativity is fueled by the process of either conscious or unconscious insight. An alternative conception of creativeness is that it is simply the act of making something new · Cute Cuteness is a kind of attractiveness commonly associated with youth and appearance, as well as a scientific concept and analytical model in ethology, first introduced by Konrad Lorenz · Discordant · Disgusting Disgust is an emotion that is typically associated with things that are regarded as unclean, inedible, infectious, or otherwise offensive. For example, "I am disgusted by the stench and sight of that heap of rotting viscera." In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote that disgust refers to something · Ecstasy It is used in philosophy usually to mean outside-of-itself." One's consciousness, for example, is not self-enclosed, one can be conscious of an Other person, who falls well outside of one's own self. In a sense, consciousness is usually, "outside of itself," in that its object is not itself. This is incontrast to the term enstasis · Elegance Elegance is the attribute of being unusually effective and simple. It is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness, particularly in the areas of visual design and decoration. Elegant things exhibit refined grace and dignified propriety · Eroticism · Entertainment Entertainment is typically passive - as in watching opera or a movie. Activities which involve participating in games or sports and reading are more often considered to be recreation · Fun Recreation or fun is the expenditure of time in a manner designed for therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or sleep, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner. As people in the world's wealthier regions lead increasingly sedentary lifestyles, the · Gaze In analysing visual culture, the concept of The Gaze describes how the viewer gazes upon (views) the people presented and represented. As a concept of social power relations, the 1960s ascendancy of postmodern philosophy and postmodern social theory, as exposited by the intellectuals Michel Foucault (the medical gaze) and Jacques Lacan (the mirror · Harmony In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and harmonic progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic line, or the "horizontal" aspect · Interpretation An interpretation in philosophy of art, is an explanation of the meaning of some work of art. An interpretation expresses an understanding of a work of art, a poem, performance, or piece of literature · Judgment The term judgment or judgement (BE) generally refers to the considered evaluation of evidence in the formation of making a decision. The term has three distinct uses: · Kitsch Kitsch is a German word denoting art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The word was absorbed directly into Yiddish with the same meaning. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making · Perception In philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, a goal which is still very far from fruition. The · Pretentious · Rasa A rasa denotes an essential mental state and is the dominant emotional theme of a work of art or the primary feeling that is evoked in the person that views, reads or hears such a work · Style In the visual arts, style can refer either to the aesthetic values, after choosing the composition, by choosing the physical techniques employed to present the imagery such as the art medium and stroke method of hand rendering, computer generated filter, or image capturing effect. An aesthetic movement - such as Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism · Sublime In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublimis is the quality of greatness or vast magnitude, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness with which nothing else can be compared and which is beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement or imitation · Taste Taste as an aesthetic, sociological, economic and anthropological concept refers to a cultural patterns of choice and preference. While taste is often understood as a biological concept, it can also be reasonably studied as a social or cultural phenomenon. Taste is about drawing distinctions between things such as styles, manners, consumer goods · more... A Mathematician's Apology - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful - Abhinavagupta - Abstract Illusionism - Abstract art - Academic art - Acquired taste - Action painting - Aesthetic relativism - Aestheticism - Aestheticization of violence - Aesthetics - Aesthetics of music - Aleksei Losev - Alexander
Theories of aesthetics

Symbolism · Classicism · Romanticism · Modernism · Postmodernism · Psychoanalytic theory · Historicism · more...
Philosophers of art Theodor W. Adorno · Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten · Arthur Schopenhauer · David Hume · Friedrich Nietzsche · Georg Hegel · Immanuel Kant · Jean-François Lyotard · Joseph Margolis · Martin Heidegger · Nelson Goodman · Richard Wollheim · Thierry de Duve · George Santayana · Hubert Dreyfus · John Dewey · Friedrich Schiller · György Lukács · Jacques Maritain · Bernard Bosanquet · Clive Bell · I. A. Richards · José Ortega y Gasset · R. G. Collingwood · David Prall · Dewitt H. Parker · Edward Bullough · Irving Singer · Roger Fry · Stephen Pepper · Susanne Langer · Theodor Lipps · Thomas Munro · Curt John Ducasse · Arthur Danto · more ...
Portal · Category · Task Force · · Discussion
This literature-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers]
This page was last archived by our server on Tue Sep 8 09:03:08 2009. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Literary Merit' News
Review | 'The Angel's Game' seals the deal - MiamiHerald.com
news.google.com
Review | 'The Angel's Game' seals the deal

MiamiHerald.com

Martin gets tepid to bad reviews for his work of literary merit . And so, when Martin is in the midst of this publishing hell -- and after Vidal marries the ...



and more »
Google News Search: Literary merit,
Thu Jul 16 05:19:31 2009
'Literary Merit' Images
mitchell jpg
oftwominds.com
mitchell jpg
350px x 239px | 13.60kB

[source page]

Judge s Award of Merit Non Fiction The Shaping of My Colorful Identity by Micah A Mitchell Ohio University

Yahoo Images Search: Literary merit,
Tue Aug 18 10:04:54 2009
'Literary Merit' Blogs
Robin Hood and Maid Marian: Introduction
library.rochester.edu
Robin Hood and Maid Marian: Introduction

unknown

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:05:14 GM

Child calls it "this foolish ditty" (III, 218), while Dobson and Taylor speak of its "complete lack of . literary merit. " and call it an "extreme and implausible attempt" to combine Robin the lover and fighter (1976, p. 176). ...

Google Blogs Search: Literary merit,
Wed Sep 9 18:31:45 2009
'Literary Merit' Answers
How do the nvels: Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 display literary merit?
Q. How do the nvels: Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 display literary merit?
Asked by crazy53928 - Sun Dec 9 23:22:36 2007 - - 2 Answers - 0 Comments

A. I have heard a great many horrible questions on here, but this one takes the cake. If one were to answer it, he or she would have to explain what gives a novel literary merit, which might take at least a few hundred pages, then he or she could begin to discuss the novels in respect to the framework previously detailed. But if your teacher, who probably had a C average in college, wants an answer, tell her that their use of various stylistic devices (you can just whip out a few like "the clear and direct language indicative of the modern novel" or "the senseless and meaningless world that offers no answer to the modern question that makes a postmodern novel"). It has been many years since I read 451 but I know that 1984 can be argued to… [cont.]
Answered by Lambert Lewis Strether - Mon Dec 10 00:53:25 2007

Yahoo Answers Search: Literary merit,
Thu Aug 27 05:21:46 2009
[Hide]▲