High literary merit is a circle jerk

with literature you can mask the fallibility of your themes with characters that appeal to the audience

ex:

>> nice jimmy does X. bad johnny does Y . bad johnny hurts nice jimmy therefore X is good and Y is bad.

>>do X and be like jimmy because he is so nice. don't do Y otherwise you're like johnny

the above is oversimplified but the general gist of how themes are conveyed in literature: you become attached to characters and then the author leverages this investment to convey a theme or idea(s)

you can do the same with film, but film is so much better at it since it takes less time and is more enjoyable for the masses to watch a movie then it is to read a 200-300 page novel

also, logic/science address the issue of the "good jmmy vs bad johnny" way of conveying ideas altogether both film and literature suffer from

science/logic does this by abstracting away from the distraction of a story and getting to the heart of ideas attempting to be conveyed

literature is not as effective as film in reaching the masses, and is not as effective as logical reasoning/science in identifying themes/ideas of merit

Also this. That's why most of the greatest literary works are impossible to "adapt" into films (Proust, Dante, Céline, Kafka, all poetry, etc.).

Literature says what happens inside, and shows what can't be shown in a demonstrative manner. Cinema can be more impressive, but can't go as deep.

>i think art is needlessly elaborate fortune cookies

daily reminder that retards like this guy is pretending to be are 100% real

Total rubbish. Open a book someday. And who cares what "the masses" want?

>.Not to creators. A film costs millions of dollars to create. Literature costs a pencil.

more people watch movies than read. youtube is arguably a form of film, and costs 0 cents. plenty of bloggers with no training or certification convey their ideas on youtube on a daily basis, and millions of people listen to what they have to say

>>No. Lots of movies (independent, foreign, etc.) have little to no audience. The few movies that reach a large audience do so because there's a huge marketing machine to support them. And this huge machine can work just as well for books.

see above, youtube

>>Logic/science creates less fallible themes

say you argue about the morality of utilitarianism vs kantism. arguing under the lens of logical reasoning allows you to abstract away from the personal attachment you have to any idea and consider the merits of each philosophy using basic examples

literature masks this by giving you characters you like/root for. it makes its readers believe a particular idea because they become attached to a character, not the scientific/logical scrutiny the idea withstand

except Welles directed what is arguably his best film out of a Kafka novel.

I have. I've learned more from logical books centered around conveying one idea ( marketing, politics, happiness, a specific idea on personal relationships) than I have from an ambiguous piece of literature with 10 different interpretations depending on the time period

literature is vague, ambiguous and ineffective, in addition to what was discussed in earlier posts

if you actually read the post I discuss that film is more effective than literature, I don't say art is fortune cookies

maybe stop getting triggered by the truth and actually form a cohesive argument?

just because a work can't be copy pasted into film doesn't mean the idea(s) that the work attempts to convey cannot be shown on film

YouTube is to film what blogs and tweets are to literature.

And "more people do X" isn't an argument that proves higher merit or higher efficiency. Your argument is literally: "More people buy Justin Bieber records than Mozart records, hence Justin Bieber is the superior musician."

>say you argue
Literature is not a tool to "argue".

>literature masks this by giving you characters
Literature needs no characters. Novels are not all literature.

Literature is not made to "learn" anything, a poem is not your high school.

Literature does not "convey ideas". What it conveys often cannot be shown on film.

It's like saying a good painting can convey the same ideas than an opera, but faster and cheaper; hence painting is superior to music. What an uneducated, insensible statement.

literary merit is a circlejerk but your argument itself is terrible

I really hate this board.

>Literature does not "convey ideas".

What do you mean?

>science/logic does this by abstracting away from the distraction of a story and getting to the heart of ideas attempting to be conveyed
it's funny because i feel the exact opposite as this, because science/math/logic are extreme abstractions of human thought

My reaction when.

DFW/Pynchon/Delillo/anyone 'Post-Modern' thought the same, that's why their novels are shit.

Literature is not philosophy. The ideas of the author do not matter. What's conveyed belongs to the aesthetic sphere, not to the logic sphere.

What are the "ideas" of Homer? No one knows and no one cares.

There are clearly logical arguments in literature though, no? In Homer we see all sorts of things like the idea of hospitality in the Odyssey or of honor in the Iliad

Hospitality or honor weren't "ideas", they were the customs of the time. Homer didn't invent anything.

It's like saying Dickens expresses the idea of private property because the characters own stuff.

those aren't arguments, those just happen to be greek cultural values around 3 millenia ago

What do you guys consider ideas or arguments, in that case? Surely Dostoevsky would be a good example here of someone who puts forward many different arguments in his novels

Homer is not really a good example for this. His "arguments", as you call them (I would deem them values and dictums) cannot be construed as "logical", simply because his books precede logic as we know it. We are talking about a time in which magical and divine reasoning was rife, and people actually looked to epic poetry of this sort as an educational tool for the tribe, not an aesthetic experience or the ideological discourse of an individual.

Dosto indeed puts forward a lot of arguments. Some would say too many, hence the concept of Bakhtin's polyphony and such.

Anyhow, to pose that "the aesthetic sphere" is something completely separate from "the logical sphere", as the user you're responding to said, is completely preposterous when thinking of modern literature. Literature can convey ideas or not, and when it's good it most often does, but it's not good because of its attempt to do so, but rather because of the originality, vigour and, yes, beauty that it manages to instill.

They are writing amusing stories not Aristotle essays on how to live stupid cuck. People just forgot aesop's make better stories

>Do you like Book X?
>Yea, that's a really great book, I love Author Y
>He sure is great

That's about where my literature discussions stop.

>Homer is not really a good example for this. His "arguments", as you call them (I would deem them values and dictums) cannot be construed as "logical", simply because his books precede logic as we know it. We are talking about a time in which magical and divine reasoning was rife, and people actually looked to epic poetry of this sort as an educational tool for the tribe, not an aesthetic experience or the ideological discourse of an individual.

I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that Homer isn't a good example of putting forth arguments, though they're obviously not in the style of a philosopher. The core argument in the Iliad is that it's preferable to be honorable than dishonorable, and examples are given of what it means to possess and act out those qualities. The plague sent by Apollo is caused by Agamemnon's dishonor of Chryses, Thersites is beaten by Odysseus for suggesting they pack their things and head home, Paris initially refusing to fight even though he instigated the war, and so on, are all examples of Homer's arguments against being dishonorable. Doing so leads to plagues or being beaten and scolded by others. On the other hand, we have the benefits of being honorable: Hektor is shown to be the most upstanding significant figure in the poem (though imperfect) by fighting well, fighting justly because his duty is to his city and king, his love for his family, and so on, all provide the largest example of why honor is so important to have: he's killed by Akhilleus and his corpse is dragged around by Akhilleus' chariot, but the gods intervene and keep his body intact for days. Akhilleus agrees to a twelve day long truce with Priam and to hand over Hektor, who's mourned by the entire city. If this isn't all an argument in favor of the idea of honor (meaning, what is necessary to obtain and maintain it), I don't know what is.

>Logic/science creates less fallible themes
No it doesn't

>>says no
>> offers no counter example or evidence of claim

seems legit

conveying a moral or value in a story indirectly is a form of argument.

its just not explicit. by having people act in a certain why you're sub-communicating that this is the norm/acceptable

>conveying ideas compared to...conveying information
careful op, you've let slip why you're wrong

dunno, user, my lit profs in HS/College shoved the notion that literature was the road to understanding truth down our throats pretty hard desu

nobody like's a pedant

neither do I; that's why the rest of your post after that is moot.

High literature forces you to think a bit more than TV or light literature which can be consumed with half a brain. So if you don't just want to say something, but also want it to be heard, better write.

Veeky Forums isn't Veeky Forums /diy/ or Veeky Forums. It's /ic/ and /tv/. It's mostly entertainment, a hobby and perhaps culture, but not primarily a learning device.

Literature isn't meant to "convey ideas" anyways, pleb.

So think harder to understand the idea the author wants you to see.... instead of making your idea more easily understandable so the masses can understand what you are saying....

.hmm....what could be wrong with this idea?

>> le vague criticism
>> le one liner
>> le green text
>> le no explanation for idiotic comments

wew lad

People don't "understand" things easily. Comprehension requires effort. One could make a comic about a concept and the masses might read through in 5 minutes. Of course they'll have forgotten it all in 5 days latest. There is no easy way to force a person into your way of thinking.

i actually like what you just said. I agree

but teachers/academics tend to have the idea that its otherwise

not necessarily. someone who has never been to the middle east and saw alladin would immediately have the perception that all brown people look/act like alladin

that took no more than an hour and a half, yet the kids/people who watched that movie already have a perception/new way of thinking about the middle east

changing someone's way of thinking doesn't require a 200 page novel or weeks of analysis

the purpose of literature as i see it is not primarily to convey information. information is secondary. learning can be accomplished through reading literature, but most of the best literature does not attempt to expound a concrete thesis: it instead ponders and raises questions in a manner which is visceral and more memorable than an academic paper. the best of film often operates on similar principles, when broken down to its most abstract: presentation precedes content, and the most acclaimed works ponder, rather than explain.

you're also completely ignoring the aesthetic factor of literature. when you claim that
>Logic/science creates less fallible themes since it does not leverage emotional attachment to characters to convey a particular idea or set of ideas
you're forgetting that this is an important aspect of literature and culture at large.

read nabokov's ideas on literature. i think you'd agree with him.

OP, not all literature is genre fiction.

Fucking retard.

What's the point of making a movie about a philosophical book about politics?

Science is more poetic than poetry because it's actually true.

>poetry and science are mutually exclusive

You're about as sharp as a marble bud.

>getting triggered by the truth
go fuck yourself ya unpearled swine

go read: the dialogic imagination, bakhtin

and then come back

who do you quote?

>I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that Homer isn't a good example of putting forth arguments, though they're obviously not in the style of a philosopher. The core argument in the Iliad is that it's preferable to be honorable than dishonorable, and examples are given of what it means to possess and act out those qualities. The plague sent by Apollo...

It's not a matter of style, it's a matter of accuracy and history. Homer's poems appear to have come into written form about (at least) 2 or 3 centuries before Thales of Miletus even came around, and with him the concept of "philosophy", never mind "logic" or "argument". All I'm saying is that Homer constitutes a problematic example because Achilles and Apollo did not fulfill the same social and ideological roles as, say, Raskolnikov or Emma Bovary do. People back then actually, truly, for REAL believed that they existed, and (in the case of the gods) that they could intervene actively in their lives as citizens.

We are talking about a static frame of mind: being honorable, each in a way pertaining to one's station in life,* wasn't a choice —it simply was. With choice removed from the equation, all we have is an impersonal, immovable dictum that might as well have fallen out of the sky. There's no individual ethics involved, and thus no effort to convince anyone of anything in the way modern lit sometimes does. There's no gray area in which to pose a novel ethical question; it's either "Be this way" or "Get fucked by the magical hand in the sky".

* and here I want to point out that Odysseus doesn't beat Thersites because he wants to go home, but rather because he's a foot soldier who dared speak out in the assembly of kings.

>science is true

Well the brown people example is a very simple concept. Try it with harder concepts. It's why people often say that the book was better than the movie. Some things cannot be conveyed efficiently, if at all, through film.

>A film costs millions of dollars to create. Literature costs a pencil.

That's an oversimplification and you know it. Anybody who wants to reach an audience has to publish and advertise. And they need to support themselves while they write.
You could say all you need to do to make a film is have a camera and you probably realize it's not that simple either.

This
You wrecked OP and

We're not talking about "reaching an audience", tho, we're talking about the medium in itself being able or not to convey ideas effectively and artfully. That doesn't cost anything extra. Besides, there's ways to reach an audience other than publishing in paper now, especially if you write something other than novels. People read a shit ton of essays online nowadays.

I've a couple of wannabe filmmaker friends and it truly is sad seeing how their "big ideas" always go to shit before they even got off the ground because of money issues.

The most sophisticated way of conveying ideas man has conceived is memes.

He already proved you wrong. There's nothing vague about his point. You compared apples to oranges and even pointed it out yourself.

I think you're confusing several large value judgements:
1. "Lit majors think reading literature is important." Not all of them, but so what? Would you expect something different than "specialists think their specialty is worth learning about"?
2. You suddenly assume the lit majors' reason for loving literature is that they think it's the best way of "conveying ideas." Forget aesthetics, facts, biography, style, etc., right? No. You can't be that reductionist here. Think of love songs: many of them say the same damn thing lyrically, but they can still be incredible musically and they can still be unique.
3. Film is "more accessible and effective and reaching a large audience." First, film is an upstart: it's been less than a century since the first talkie. Second, it employs completely different language and style conventions, and has massive limitations in what it can realistically portray: viewing length, logistics, narrative demands, etc. Third, you generally can't even watch films without a huge infrastructure and resources of power, etc., let alone make them. Fourth, arguing that one art form is inherently superior to another is bullshit. What's next, all the lit majors should switch to dance or painting?
4. This comes out of nowhere, but it's not a signal-to-noise equation, and claiming logic/science is "less fallible" (whatever the fuck that means) in conveying concepts because it doesn't use characters to convey ideas is even sillier. If emotions help convey a concept, not using them would be stupid--and many concepts are intrinsically tied to emotion.

Why would you ever write such an autistic wall of text to argue with someone who's using sweeping statements and is clearly baiting.
>hello board dedicated to literature, have I ever told you how literature is shit? I guess you're pretty angry now. You could say I'm some kind of ruser, perhaps...

That's nowhere near what I call a wall of text, it's just a few thoughts. Besides, it doesn't really matter if it's bait or not. There's a lazy debate going on either way, and a few people are reading and thinking. It's no more a waste of my time than if OP was serious, or you bothering to chide me for responding. If we're on Veeky Forums for any reason, doing anything, we're just wasting time.

Poets are scientists m8

>science is more truthful than poetry because its actually poetic

your comment is more dumb than mine because its actually false