In a recent post I talked about literature as being not so much a genre as a description of quality within a genre. I based that post on the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition of  literature, but the term is also often used to refer to writing that has some sort of meaning, often a social, political or spiritual comment. Literature is thought to raise issues and that’s one of the reasons why people like to use the term literature as something separate to popular fiction which often does make no attempt to impart meaning. However, just because some popular fiction doesn’t impart meaning doesn’t mean that all popular fiction is devoid of meaning, or that lack of meaning is necessarily a mark of the category. Take The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. You could consider it literary young adult dystopian because despite what you may think of it personally it is well written it has a powerful emotional effect on readers it makes a political statement The political statement gives … [Read more...]