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Literary standards
1. There are generally considered to be seven standards a piece of literature should abide to in order
to be considered 'literary'. If a piece of writing is considered 'literary' this usually suggests that it
is a scholarly article or classical writing that is extremely well written and is very informative.
Literary writing can be intellectual and contain a lot of cleverly hidden meanings which ensure
the writing can be enjoyed and studied on many different levels and often still enjoyed many
years after it was written. Many people believe that literature cannot be defined and literary
theory should simply be thought of as way of interpreting both texts and events.
The seven standards that a piece of literature usually contains to be considered literary are:
• PERMANENCE
An important feature of great literature is that it endures. Classic literature such as Dickens is
still enjoyed by readers today, generations after it was originally written and in a completely
different world to the one it was intended for. This is extremely important because if a work of
literature is not enjoyed 20 years after publication, it will simply be forgotten.
• UNIVERSAL APPEAL
This is similar to endurance in the fact that literature must appeal to a range of people across
different age groups, nationalities, cultures and beliefs.
• ARTISTRY
The literature should be well written and appeal to our creative sides with beautifully crafted
phrases and sentences. Sentences such as these are often memorized and can become
famous phrases.
• STYLE
The writer of literature will usually have a unique view of the world and will put thoughts to us
in a way we have never considered. It may be thoughts about the world or it may simply be
thoughts about the actual words used. Words may be used in a creative and unusual way that is
entertaining and interested.
• INTELLECTUALLY VALUABLE
Literary work will usually inform us about our past, our present or the world around us. It may
not be in the form of facts and figures but it will help us understand our lives and realize truths
about humanity and life in general. Literature should mentally stimulate us and enriches our
thoughts.
• SUGGESTIVENESS
2. Literature should carry many associations that lead beyond the surface meaning. Underlying
suggestions usually carry an enormous amount of emotional power, often because it is not
directly mentioned but hinted at through associations that can often be more powerful. The
reader is left to establish what the author is suggesting and this captures the reader's imagination
by making think about what they are reading and engaging them into the story.
• SPIRITUAL VALUE
Great works of literature are often thought to have an underlying moral message that can
potentially make us better people. Moral values are often written between the lines and can help
us become better people.
3. LITERARY MOVEMENTS
Arminianism
The Arminian Controversy
Definitions
The beliefs of Jacobus Arminius (Jacob Harmanszoon, 1560-1609), a Dutch theologian, reflected
dissatisfaction with the principal tenets of Calvinism. According to R. L Colie
in TheEncyclopedia of Philosophy, Arminius "came to doubt the deterministic doctrine of
damnation, and believed that election, dependent in part on man's free will, was not arbitrary but
arose from God's pity for fallen men" (I:164). As a professor of theology at Leiden from 1603
until his death, Arminius had a great influence on the doctrinal debates of his time, and Dutch
Arminianism was closely linked to secular intellectual life.
Background
The Great Remonstrance published in 1610 by the Arminian clergy codified Arminius's beliefs
into five major points:
1. Rejection of the doctrine of election
2. Rejection of predestination
3. Rejection of the belief that Christ died for the elect alone
4. Rejection of the belief in irresistible grace
5. Assertion of the belief that saints could fall from grace.
In 1618, at the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht), these tenets were declared heretical, and
orthodox Calvinism was upheld. (See the "Five Points" of refutation.) Arminians (Remonstrants)
were arrested on charges of treason and given the choice of recantation or exile, although some
later returned to Holland.
As Perry Miller comments in The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, "Arminianism
was heresy [to the Puritans], not because it tried to make God just, but because it secured His
justice at the expense of His essential power, forcing Him to solicit the help of man, holding Him
powerless to change a man who chooses to be evil. It was wrong to say that God expects
anything from man in the sense of leaving any decree uncertain or dependent upon man's doing,
as though God has to wait before He can tell whether the creature will fulfill the expectation, but
it was correct to say that in the Covenant He expects a return from those whom he foreknows
will give it" (404).
Campbell, Donna M. "Arminian Controversy." Literary Movements. Dept. of English, Washington State University.
https://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/armin.htm Retrieved June 22, 2014.
4. Calvinism (in New England Puritan Culture)
Definition
The works of John Calvin (1509-1564), especially his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536),
were central to Puritan beliefs because they asked central questions: how do we acquire
knowledge of God and of ourselves? According to Nicholas Wolterstorff in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy,
Thomas Aquinas had taught that the theologian should start with God and then consider creatures
insofar as they relate to God as their beginning and end. Calvin broke decisively with this
approach in claiming that knowledge of God is so interrelated with knowledge of ourselves that
the one cannot be had without the other. He taught that when we accurately reflect on ourselves,
we realize the excellence of our natural gifts; but we also realize that our exercise of these gifts
yields 'miserable ruin' and unhappiness, and that 'our very being is nothing but subsistence in the
one God.' Without this realization of our misery and dependence-especially of our misery-none
of us comes, or even tries to come, to a knowledge of God. On the other hand, there is also no
knowledge of self without a knowledge of God. Without a standard by which to measure
ourselves, we invariably yield to pride, overestimating the worth of our natural gifts and
overlooking the corruption that has resulted from the exercise of those gifts. (II: 7)
Calvin believed that simply knowing truths about God did not, as the Scholastics would have it,
mean the same thing as knowing God. Instead, individuals must cultivate this awareness of deity
through examination of the seeds of divinity within each person as well as through contemplation
of and reflection on the world. Sin, for Calvin, is the opposite of knowing God; and a corrupt
reason and will can prevent this knowledge.
Calvin's social thought was also influential. He believed that human beings were creatures of
fellowship and that Church and State satisfied a human need for this type of grouping. According
to Wolterstorff,
The concern of the church is the spiritual realm, the life of the inner man; the concern of the state
is the temporal realm, the regulation of external conduct. In regulating external conduct, the
general aim of the state, in Calvin's view, is to insure justice or equity in society at large. This
equity has two facets. Obviously the state must enforce restrictive justice, but Calvin also
believed that the state should secure distributive justice, doing its best to eliminate gross
inequalities in the material status of its members. (9)
Like John Winthrop (see "A Model of Christian Charity"), Calvin believed that an ideal
government would be a republic in which power is balanced among magistrates and in which a
competent ruling aristocracy is elected by the citizens.
Doctrine
Calvinism is a system of theological thought found in the doctrinal expressions of the Reformed and
Presbyterian churches, from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. The famous "Five Points" represent a
somewhat narrow and debased definition of Calvinist thought, since they were formulated in opposition to the
five articles of the Arminians. Since they are well known, however, they have been included here.
The Five Points of Calvinism (often remembered through the acronym T U L I P)
1. Total depravity. Man is naturally unable to exercise free will, since through Adam's fall he has suffered
hereditary corruption. Evil was a palpable presence in the Puritans' world, and it was often symbolized by the
