Definition of "literature" []

• The body of written works of a language, period, or culture. (noun)
• Imaginative or creative writing, especially of recognized artistic value: "Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity” ( Rebecca West). (noun)
• The art or occupation of a literary writer. (noun)
• The body of written work produced by scholars or researchers in a given field: medical literature. (noun)
• Printed material: collected all the available literature on the subject. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Both men were serious about literature, but they differed on how much the formal detective story, as perfected during the Golden Age between the World Wars, could be taken seriously _as _literature."
• "Israel _izrael_, not _issrael_ jeans _janes_ joust _just_ or _joost_ larynx _lar'inx'_ or _la'rinx_, not _larnix_ literature _literature_, or _choor_"
• "Confusion may be avoided and time may be saved if teachers will remember that nature literature, as here defined, is a form of _literature_, and that its purpose therefore is primarily to present truth (not necessarily facts) in an entertaining way."