American literature is literature written or produced in the United States and its preceding colonies (for specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States). Before the founding of the United States, the British colonies on the eastern coast of the present-day United States were heavily influenced by English literature. The American literary tradition thus began as part of the broader tradition of English literature.
Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature writing is considered to be an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage.
A beautiful literature springs from the depth and fullness of intellectual and moral life, from an energy of thought and feeling, to which nothing, as we believe, ministers so largely as enlightened religion.
While the guardians of “literary” fiction still give each other prizes and writers can still achieve stardom and create good work, the fact remains that it is a movement that has lost all its creative force as a movement.
Orson Scott Card, Quo Vadis? (Published in Nebula Awards Showcase 2008)
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