Literary works
In the process of book classification and indexing, the distinction between literary works and other works is a more difficult issue. Due to the development of modern science, the intersection and penetration between literature and adjacent disciplines, including history, journalism, geography, etc., many "hybrid" marginal literary works have appeared, making it often difficult for us to define their categories when classifying and indexing. . For this reason, in this lecture, we discuss the distinction between literary works and other works.
To correctly distinguish literary works from other works, we must first clarify what a literary work is? What is its essential difference from other works (subject works that are not literary works)? This difference can only be clarified theoretically , Only in this way can we firmly grasp the essence of things in the practice of classification and indexing, and not be confused by superficial phenomena.
So, what is a literary work?
Marxism’s understanding of literature is, first of all, a social ideology that is formed and developed on a certain socio-economic basis. , is a reflection of social life in a certain era; secondly, it uses concrete, vivid and touching images instead of abstract concepts like philosophy and social science to reflect social life; thirdly, it is the art of language, which uses language as its Tools to create artistic images. Reflect social life. It can be seen that literary works are works that use language as a tool and use various literary forms to vividly reflect life and express the author's understanding and emotions of life and society, so as to arouse people's sense of beauty and give people artistic enjoyment.
The basic characteristic of literary works is to reflect social life with images. In the creation process of literary works, writers always engage in the activity (or method) of image thinking. It has three characteristics:
Firstly, the writer uses various artistic means to cast a large number of perceptual materials obtained from life into living artistic images; secondly, it is always inseparable from imagination (fantasy, association) and Fiction; third, it is always accompanied by strong emotional activities.
The creative process of image thinking in literary works determines the fundamental difference between literary works and disciplinary works created by scientists using logical thinking. The difference can be understood from the following five aspects:
1. In terms of content, although they are all reflections of objective things, the disciplinary works adopt a "scientific grasp of the world", with detailed and accurate materials, including the time, place, person, cause, process, and result of the event. It must be real, the shape, size, nature, characteristics, and use of things must be accurate, the numbers, charts, and examples cited must be reliable, and everything must have objective reality; while literary works adopt an "artistic view of the world" "Mastery method", it is based on life but through fiction, and never sticks to real people and true events. The characters do not use one model but are composed of many people and merge into one. The events are not all based on facts but take one end and develop them. The environment is not just based on one place, but is combined and created according to needs. Everything is objective and rational.
2. In terms of form, although the medium they use is language, the language of disciplinary works is valuable for simplicity and clarity; while the language of literary works is valuable for literary talent.
3. From the author's point of view, they are all the results of thinking, but disciplinary works mainly use logical thinking, speaking with objective facts, statistics, logical judgment and reasoning; while literary works mainly use logical thinking. What is more important is image thinking, describing and speaking with vivid and touching images.
4. From the reader’s point of view, they all have cognitive value, but disciplinary works appeal to readers with facts and reason, and appreciators focus on the evaluation of scientific truth and practical functions; while literary works appeal to readers Readers rely on emotion and imagination, while appreciators focus on the judgment of artistic authenticity and aesthetic creation.
5. In terms of function, they all have social value, but disciplinary works are mainly tools for transmitting information, focusing on practicality; while literary works are means of social influence, focusing on aesthetics.
From the comparison of the above characteristics, we can believe that the difference between literary works and other works is that they do not aim to convey specific specific knowledge. It is impossible to obtain scientific and technological expertise by reading literary works. Or specific scientific experiments, production and working methods; if the purpose of a certain work is to convey specific specific knowledge, then although it has beautiful literary value, such as Sima Qian's "Historical Records", it does not fall into the category of literature.
By grasping the essential differences between literary works and other works, we can index with greater confidence during the classification and indexing process. Of course, book classification also has its own special rules, and it must be indexed according to these rules.
Below, we will discuss in detail the distinction between literary works and other works.
1. The distinction between literary works and literary research works
In "China Library Library (Children's Library, Primary and Secondary School Library Edition)", literary books include two types of books and materials, Books and various literary works with literature as the research object.
Books with literature as the research object are scientific works with the purpose of exploring and studying the laws of the literary field, including literary theory, literary criticism and literary history. This type of book belongs to the category of scientific works on logical thinking and is generally easy to make judgments. What is more likely to be confused is the distinction between "literary appreciation" books in literary reviews.
The so-called literary appreciation is a unique spiritual activity when readers appreciate literary works. It is a process of feeling, experience and understanding based on the images provided by literary works. As a category in the classification, "literary appreciation" includes works on the theory and methods of literary appreciation, including the cognitive process of literary appreciation activities, the buzzing phenomenon of literary appreciation and other general rules.
In "Chinese Library (Children's Library, Primary and Secondary School Library Edition)", "Literary Appreciation" and "Literary Criticism" are combined into one category and classified into the "I06 Literary Criticism and Research" category Go in. Literary criticism is a work in which literary critics analyze and study writers' works, help readers correctly appreciate and understand various literary phenomena, summarize creative experience, and promote creative development. The analysis and evaluation of literary works often include the impression of appreciation of the work and intuitive judgment. Therefore, literary appreciation and literary criticism are closely related. Works that guide readers to correctly appreciate and understand literary works should be classified into "I06 Literary Criticism and Research" and its related subordinate categories. For example, "Micro-Novel Reading and Appreciation" written by Wei Yushan takes the style and characteristics of micro-novel as the main line and discusses the five characteristics of micro-novel in chapters. Each chapter is accompanied by six examples, and each example is followed by a work review. and reading tips, whose purpose is to guide readers to appreciate correctly, should be included in I062.54.
In addition, the introduction and analysis of literary works should also be classified as "literary criticism". For example, "Analysis and Reading of 100 Chinese and Foreign Classics" edited by Yang Liping selects 100 Chinese and foreign classics (no works are included) and provides an introductory analysis of each article, including an introduction to the author and analysis of the works, which has the dual functions of appreciation and information. , enter I061. Similarly, "Introduction to Chinese and Foreign Literary Masterpieces" edited by Xu Bo is also included in I061.
However, it should be noted that works compiled in the form of collections (selections) of literary works but titled works appreciation, appreciation, selection, etc. should not be classified as "works appreciation", although The author's introduction, notes, etc. are also compiled after the work, but its main purpose is to provide reading of the work, so it should be classified as a work. For example:
"Appreciation of the Romance of the Vernacular Fengshen", (Ming Dynasty) original work by Xu Zhonglin, included in I422.4.
"Outstanding Classics of Ancient and Modern Chinese and Foreign Literature: Foreign Short Stories Volume", edited by Ke Yan, included in I41.
It can be seen that the difference between literary works and work appreciation lies in whether its purpose is to provide reading or to guide appreciation.
2. The distinction between literary works and historical works
Literature and history are the closest and most intimate. Since ancient times, China has said that "literature and history are one family", which shows that there was originally a relationship between literature and history. Blood relationship. The interpenetration of literature and history has produced a series of marginal literary works, such as historical novels, historical dramas, epics, historical stories, historical essays (including memoirs and biographies), etc. Whether these marginal literary works are classified as history or literature, the classification standard is: whether they are loyal to historical facts or fiction, records of historical facts are classified as history, and artistic fictions are classified as literature.
1. Historical novels:
Historical novels are a marginal genre produced by the intersection of history and novels. It centers on the shaping of historical figures, and is a narrative literary carrier that reflects the historical social life in an extensive and multi-faceted manner through complete storylines and descriptions of specific environments. It is not limited by real people and real events. The author boldly fictionalizes the plot and uses his imagination to make the characters in the novel more vivid and vivid, and more artistically realistic and typical. Historical novels have a strong literary "primary" component and should be classified into the historical and biographical novel category of literature.
Example: "The Life of Shu Fei Wenxiu", by Liu Xi, entered I427.53.
In addition, historical dramas and epics also have a heavy literary "primary" component, and should also be classified into related categories of literature.
Example: "Song of the Great Wind" (historical drama), written by Chen Baichen, entered I323.
2. Biography and biographical literature:
Biographies are books and materials that record the lives of characters. Traditional biographical works emphasize the examination of characters, such as chronology, annual examinations, major events, etc. In "China Library Method", biographies are classified as historical. Biographical literature (or literary biography), which belongs to the broad sense of prose, is literature created based on the real events of famous people. Its characteristics: first, it is loyal to the facts, and the content written is indeed the people and things that existed and happened in life; second, it is loyal to history, and expresses certain essential aspects of social life through the description of the characters' lives and deeds. In "Chinese Library of Literature", biographical literature is classified as literature. It should be said that biography and biographical literature are both marginal literary works produced by the cross-penetration of history and literature, but their "primary color" content is different. The difference between them is that generally speaking, historical biographies that mainly describe historical facts belong to the category of historical science and fall into the category of history; literary biographies that vividly describe characters using visual techniques belong to the category of literature and fall into the category of literature.
However, the boundary between biography and biographical literature (or literary biography) is difficult to clearly distinguish. Especially in recent years, some historical biographies have adopted vivid literary expressions, impacting the traditional form of "biography" and blurring the boundaries between biography and biographical literature.
Biographical literature is different from other literary works in which fictional character stories are the content. It has the dual nature of "biography" and "literature". As a biography, it has historical value; as literature, it has an artistic function. In the actual book classification process, some books are called biographical literature but are actually historical works. Therefore, the classification of biographies and biographical literature depends on the specific book content. It can be grasped from the following two aspects:
(1) If it truly reflects historical events or records the life stories of historical figures, without fictional plots, and only carries out appropriate artistic processing on the premise of being loyal to historical facts, it can be Books are classified into the historical category based on their greatest use; only books that use visual methods to vividly describe characters and conform to the characteristics of reportage, stories, novels, and prose genres can be classified into the relevant categories of literature.
Example: "The Great Man Sun Yat-sen", edited by Li Maogao, entered K827.6.
"The First Half of My Life", written by Puyi, entered I521.
"Mr. Fujino", written by Lu Xun, entered I626.
The deeds of heroic figures and the deeds of advanced figures in various subjects are included in the D politics-related category. For example, "The Biography of Contemporary Young Heroes of China", edited by Sichuan Children's Publishing House, included in D462.263.
(2) Record the life history of a character or a longer period of time, aiming to describe the character's growth and development history in detail, and enter the historical category; but only intercept the character's activities at a certain stage Fragments, intended to express a theme of certain social significance, fall into the category of "reportage" or "story" in literature.
Example: "The Life of Xu Beihong", enter K825.7.
"Essential Stories of Scientists from Ancient and Modern China and Foreign Countries",
Edited by Yin Xueyi, included in I892.7.
"Celebrity Youth Stories" written by Luo Qing and Liu Guangchun, published in I892.7
3. Memoirs:
Memoirs are the author's description of himself or a character he is familiar with. The historical recollection of past life experiences and social activities should belong to the category of history. However, "China Library Collection (Children's Library, Primary and Secondary School Library Edition)" also lists memoirs in the lower category of "I5 Reportage" and the categories of "K106, K206 Historical Materials" and "K8 Biography", and the capacity can easily cause confusion. . According to some instructions in the "Chinese Library (Children's Library, Primary and Secondary School Library Edition) User Manual", when classifying memoirs, attention should be paid to the differences between different types of books.
(1) Memoirs in "reportage" refer to memoirs written using reportage techniques, rich in literary characteristics, and based on historical facts. It is characterized by a strong literary color, emphasis on image creation, personality description, and vivid language.
Example: "By Mr. Peng's side" dictated by Jing Xizhen, enter I521.
"My Family", written by Tao Cheng, entered I521.
(2) Memoirs in the "biography" category refer to memories of someone's life events. Memoirs in "historical materials" refer to memories of historical events.
Example: "White House Years - Kissinger's Memoirs", enter K837.12.
"Memoirs of Mao Dun", entered K825.6.
(3) Those that actually describe the political activities or events of a certain country through the memories of the characters are included in the political category of various countries.
Example: "Memoirs of Haig", compiled by the Institute of Contemporary International Relations, contains the correspondence between Haig and Reagan. The letter mainly discusses major issues such as dealing with the US-Soviet Union and US-China relations, and is included in D50.
4. Story-based historical books:
Story-based historical books are particularly prominent among children’s books. It takes the story genre as its expression form. The descriptiveness of things, the vividness of the plot, and the colloquial nature of the language all have the characteristics of the story genre. However, it also faithfully describes the development and change process of real life. The people, places and times it writes have certain objective facts, and have the objective and true content characteristics of historical works. The classification of this type of reading material mainly depends on whether its content is practical for understanding. If the function of a certain story-based historical reading is to provide educational knowledge, it should be classified into the history category; while a reading that is only used for aesthetic entertainment should be classified into the story category.
Example: "Twenty-five Thousand Miles Long March", written by Duan Wanhan, entered K263.
"Three Major Battles", written by Wan Qinghua, entered K266.
"Handsome Boy", written by Mo Yao and Shui Xiu, included in I892.7
3. The distinction between literary works and journalistic works
The intersection of journalism and literature The marginal literary work produced by infiltration is reportage. Reportage is an emerging literary style. It has three characteristics: First, it is news. It truly, accurately, quickly and timely reflects real people and real events with typical significance in real life. It is strictly loyal to the facts and depicts real people and real events. It is the life of reportage. The second is literary nature, which reflects objective facts in artistic form and is an artistic representation of real life. The third is political commentary, which has a distinct political tendency and artistic appeal.
In the "China Library Collection (Children's Library, Primary and Secondary School Library Edition)", the classification of reportage is stipulated as follows: reportage that uses literary techniques to report the life events of characters; uses real names as Works written with typical characters and fictional storylines are classified into novels; biographies, life stories or memoirs that describe characters are classified into biographies. The literary style is used to introduce the general situation or knowledge of a certain subject field into related subjects. This provision can be analyzed as follows: The difference between reportage and other works lies in the degree of literary style. As a marginal literary style that truly and quickly reflects real life, reportage includes a variety of styles: documentary, summary, research, story, observation, memoir, etc. Different styles of reportage have different ratios of "primary colors" between literature and news. Storytelling (or novel) reportage has a heavier emphasis on the "primary color" of literature; general and research reportage has a heavier emphasis on the "primary color" of news (or political commentary). Therefore, reportage with strong literary nature should be included in the literature category, while reportage with strong news and political commentary should be included in related categories.
However, in actual classification work, this distinction standard is still difficult to grasp. The biggest feature of reportage is to truly and quickly reflect various struggles and economic construction achievements in real life, such as technological revolution, technological innovation, experience and experience in invention and creation, scientific research results and other new people and new things, which are often reflected in the reportage genre. If one simply uses "the degree of literary style" to determine the attribution of a book, then the relevant "achievements", "experiences", " There are no books in categories such as "experience". At the same time, general readers often look for books and materials in this area first in terms of content, and rarely in terms of literary style. Therefore, it is not enough to determine the category of a book based only on the "level of literary style." The nature of the content of the book materials, the author's intention, the needs of the readers, the mission of the library, and the arrangement of the classification system must also be considered.
Based on the above points of view, the classification of works written in the reportage genre cannot be generalized. If the content of the reportage works reflects the general political situation and the achievements of economic construction, it can be included in the categories related to "Politics" and "Economy"; if it reflects a certain research result, experience, the process of a certain engineering and technological innovation, and experience, it should be included in various disciplines. ; If the content is a revolutionary memoir, it should be included in the "memoir" of reportage.
Example: "Hong Kong, 1997", edited by Sponge, enter D618.
"Gunshots at the foot of Helan Mountain: Trial records of major typical cases in Ningxia", edited by Zou Xianchao, entered into D912.
"Dedicate Everything to the Party", written by Wu Yunduo, entered I521.
4. The distinction between literary works and geographical works
The "Prose" category of literature includes "Travel Notes" prose, and the Geography category also has a "Travel·Travel Notes" category Category, how to distinguish these two categories?
Travel prose is a brisk style of writing and vivid description, describing the experiences during travel, including mountains and rivers, local customs, places of interest, and society. Life and other aspects of content. Literary works that often include discussion or lyricism in the description to express the author's thoughts and feelings.
Geographical travel notes are actual records of nature, scenic spots, urban and rural areas, products, and customs.
The criterion for distinguishing the two types of books is the author’s purpose of writing. The former is mainly lyrical, expressing the author's thoughts and feelings, and should be classified into the literature category; the latter is mainly based on real scenes, intended to introduce geographical knowledge, and should be classified into the geography category.
Example: "Quartz's Travels and Essays", written by Quanzhi, entered I627.
"Travel Notes on Hainan Island", written by Luo Maofan, included in K928.9.
5. The distinction between literary works and scientific works
Literature and science are incompatible with each other. Due to the rapid development of science and technology and the mutual penetration and integration of disciplines, the marginal genre of "scientific literature and art" has emerged. They have the characteristics of making artistic summaries of scientific materials, and at the same time using artistic methods to understand science, absorbing literary and artistic qualities from literature, and acquiring scientific qualities from science. It is this scientific and intellectual character that makes them It is different from general literary works, and they cannot be generally lumped into the category of general literary genres.
"Scientific literature and art" works include science fiction novels, science fiction movies, TV scripts, science stories, science fairy tales and science sketches, etc. Different genres create different degrees of literary characteristics.
Science fiction novels, science fiction movies, TV scripts, science fiction stories, and science fiction fairy tales are unquestionably classified as literature due to their strong fictional nature. Science stories and science sketches are relatively vague. Some science stories and sketches have very prominent scientific features that overwhelm their literary and artistic features. Although it adopts a literary style, it aims to introduce the general situation or knowledge of a certain subject field. The characteristics of such works are biased toward scientific popular readings, and their function is cognitive education. Therefore, it should be classified according to scientific knowledge categories.
Example: "Calculating Fast", written by Liu Houyi, entered O121.4.
6. The distinction between literary works and language works
(1) Readers and readers:
Because literature uses language to shape images, many literary masterpieces also It is often chosen as a textbook for learning language and literature, so the two are easily confused. When classifying, it should be noted that for the purpose of learning language and literature, some literary classics are selected and accompanied by explanations or annotations on vocabulary, grammar, rhetoric and other language aspects, and should be classified into language-related "readings" according to the purpose of publication and the purpose of the readers. "category.
Example: "Selected Chinese and Foreign Literary Works: Three Years of Junior High School" (Middle School Extracurricular Reading Series), edited by Hu Fuxia, entered as H1-482.
"Selected Readings for Primary Schools", edited by Wang Yousheng, supplementary reading materials for Chinese language teaching in primary and secondary schools, for use by sixth grade primary schools) entered H1-48.
(2) Works in two languages
Literary works in two languages, Chinese and foreign, are selected for the purpose of learning Chinese and should also be classified into language-related categories. Eyes go.
Example: "The Ugly Duckling" (English-Chinese bilingual reading), rewritten by Denton, translated and annotated by Zhao Haitian, entered into H31-48.
Literary works with Chinese pinyin notation are selected for the purpose of learning Chinese language and should also be classified into language-related categories.
Example: "The Elephant with its Trunk Cut Off", written by Chi Shuchang and Yu Zhi, with phonetic notation by Wang Xinmin (Chinese Pinyin reading), enter H125-48.
(3) Enlightenment readings:
Some forms of literary works are often used as tools for enlightenment education. Enlightenment books such as "The Three Character Classic" use the rhyme of words to compile many books suitable for children to recite and meditate. Although they have some language features of poetry, such as rhyme, rhythm, harmonious intonation, etc., they are catchy and easy to remember. But this kind of reading is not literature. Its content is to convey certain information rather than express thoughts and feelings, so its rhyme and rhythm do not naturally develop with the ups and downs of emotions like poetry. Therefore, such books should be classified according to content and usage functions.
Example: "Three Character Classic", enter H106-48.