(i)Literature in its comprehensive Sense. Literature in its most comprehensive meaning includes all the activates of the human soul in general, or within a particular sphere, period, country, or language and therefore embraces all manner of composition in prose and verse, scientific or purely, literary, set down in writing or communicated by word of mouth, thus we speak of the literature of Mathematic or the law, of the Latin or Persian literature. When we speak of literature of India, we do not wish to exclude those poems like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, which were handed down for generation by word of mouth, and which only during recent times have been committed to writing.
(ii)Literature in its Restricted and Meaning; In the restricted sense in which we generally employ the term, literature is that class of writing which aims at rousing the feelings of the beautiful by the perfection of form or excellence of ideas or by both. In this sense, literature is distinguished from purely scientific and technical treatises; works on Mathematics, or prosody, or philosophy, would not be literature. Under literature, when used in its narrower meaning, we should include only such works, as, by reason of their subject-matter or the artistic way in which they are handled, are of general human interest, and awaken in us one or more of the pleasurable of feeling of the beautiful, the sublime, the pathetic or the ludicrous. Such as poetry, romance, history, biography and essays, as opposed to scientific works, or those writings which aim expressly specialized treatise on astronomy, political economy, philosophy or even history, in part because it appeals not to a particular class of the piece of literature, whether it also imparts knowledge or not, is to yield aesthetic satisfaction by the manner in which its handles its theme. It is essentiality this accept of literature which was well brought out by the late Viscount Morley when he spoke of it as consisting of all books-and they are-not so many-where moral truths and human passions are treated with a certain largeness, sanity and attractiveness of form. For the much in little, the extent of its scope and yet its brevity, this description of Morley’s would be heart to beat, through it were a question of finding a synonym for the word literature, the French belles letters, beautiful or polite, polished or refined letters, would do admirably well. The French mean by their very expressive and apposite phrase, letters exactly what we mean by our word literature, when we use it in its restricted sense.
(iii)Literature used in a technical Sense : Besides the two above sense in which the term literature is commonly employed, there is one other in which it is also used, viz., in a technique, and secondly, to describe the different phrases through which the intellectual development of a people has passed, or in other words, to narrate the literary history of a people. In this latter meaning, a work on English literature would treat of the literary activities of the English people form the earliest times to present, considered in respect of their national progress, and also of literary forms, which go on changing from age to age, in which such activities have been embodied. It would give and account of the literary achievements of the different writers from very early times to our own day. It would show hoe in different ages, different poetic forms were invented and became popular.
The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power: According to De Quincy, ‘’there is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach, the function of the second is to move. ‘’Literature of knowledge speaks to the discursive understanding of man. Literature of power appeals to the higher understanding of reason through affections of pleasure and sympathy. It noting short of a paradox to think that literature aims at giving, information only. It is inherent truth which makes literature great or small. This truth is present in all-high or low-in the from of seed or germ. Literature only gives novel forms to truth, and help to develop their birth in the heart of man. But this can be done only in the literature of power. Literature of power represents in it self the Heavenly innocence that man has and also his original simplicity. Further, De Quincy gives the examples of literature of power. ‘’ When, in Kind Lear, the height and depth and breadth of human passion is revealed in the weakness of an old man’s nature, and is one night to world of storm are brought face to face- the human world and the worlds of physical nature-mirrors of each other, semi-choral antiphonies, strophe and antistrophe heaving with rival convulsions, and with the double darkness of night and madness- when I am thus suddenly started into a filling of the infinity of the world .’