What is it that we mean by literature? Popularly, and amongst the thoughtless, it is held to include everything that is printed in a book. Little logic is required to disturb that definition. The most thoughtless person is easily made aware that in the idea of literature one essential element is some relation to a general and common interest of man—so that what applies only to a local, or professional, or merely personal interest, even though presenting itself in the shape of a book, will not belong to Literature. So far the definition is easily narrowed; and it is as easily expanded. For not only is much that takes a station in books not literature; but inversely, much that really is literature never reaches a station in books. The weekly sermons of Christendom, that vast pulpit literature which acts so extensively upon the popular mind—to warn, to uphold, to renew, to comfort, to alarm—does not attain the sanctuary of libraries in the ten-thousandth part of its extent. The Drama again—as, for instance, the finest of Shakespeare's plays in England, and all leading Athenian plays in the noontide of the Attic stage—operated as a literature on the public mind, and were (according to the strictest letter of that term) published through the audiences that witnessed their representation some time before they were published as things to be read; and they were published in this scenical mode of publication with much more effect than they could have had as books during ages of costly copying or of costly printing.
我們所說的“文學”是什么呢?人們，尤其是對此欠考慮者，普遍會認為：文學包括印在書本中的一切。可這種定義無需多少理由便可被****。最缺乏思考的人也很容易明白，“文學”這一概念中有個基本要素，即文學或多或少都與人類普遍而共同的興趣有關(guān);因此，那些僅適用于某一局部、某一行業(yè)或僅僅處于個人興趣的作品，即便以書的形式面世，也不該屬于“文學”。就此而論，文學之定義很容易變窄，而它同樣也不難拓寬。因為不僅有許多躋身于書卷之列的文字并非文學作品，而且與之相反，不少真正的文學著作卻未曾付梓成書。譬如基督教世界每星期的布道，這種篇什浩繁且對民眾精神影響極廣的講壇文學，這種對世人起告戒、鼓勵、振奮、安撫或警示作用的布道文學，最終能進入經(jīng)樓書館的尚不及其萬分之一。此外還有戲劇，如英國莎士比亞秀的劇作，以及雅典戲劇藝術(shù)鼎盛時期的全部主流劇作，都曾作為文學作品對公眾產(chǎn)生過影響。這些作品在作為讀物出版之前，已通過觀看其演出的觀眾而“出版”了(這正是“出版”一詞最嚴格的意義)。在抄寫或印刷都非常昂貴的年代，通過舞臺形式“出版”這些劇作遠比將它們出版成書效果更佳。