What is Literature：
14th century: It means polite learning through reading. A man of literature or a man of letters = a man of wide reading, ―literacy‖ 18th century: practice and profession of writing
19th century: the high skills of writing in the special context of high imagination。 My definition:
In the widest sense it is just about anything written. In the more specialized sense, it is the art that use language as a medium and characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal.
What is poetry?
A literary form Written in lines
Compressed content Rich imagery
Beautiful harmony Great artistic appeal
Sonnet十四行诗：
an exact form of poetry in 14 lines of iambic pentameter intricately rhymed.
玄学派诗歌：
The term ―metaphysical poetry‖ is commonly used to name the work of the 17th –century writers who wrote under the influence of John Donne. Metaphysical poets tried to break away from the conventional fashion of the Elizabethan love poetry.
Ode颂: an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in tone. Imagism and Ezra Pound An image is ―that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time‖.
(1) Direct treatment of the ‗thing‘ whether subjective or objective.
(2) To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
(3) As regarding rhythm: to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome.
什么是小说：
A work of fiction is a narrative that originates in the imagination of the author.
Sometimes the stories are ―true‖, but more often they are not.
Some fiction—historical or autobiographical fiction, for example—may focus on real people and the plot may be grounded in actual events, but the way characters interact and how the plot unfolds are the author‘s own invention.
The purpose of fiction are mainly for entertainment, instruction, and aesthetic pleasure of the reader
小说要素：Plot Setting Point of view Theme Tone Irony Style
Lost Generation垮掉的一代： applied to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the years following the First World War, who rebelled against former ideals and values; 代表人物：
Francis Scott Fitzgerald Ezra Pound
Sherwood Anderson William Faulkner Ernest Hemingway
什么是戏剧：
A drama is a work of literature or a composition which delineates life and human activity by means of presenting various actions of, and dialogues between a group of characters. And it is designed for theatrical presentation
戏剧要素：
Plot Character Thought Diction Music Spectacle
戏剧分类： Tragedy Comedy
Tragicomedy Melodrama Problem play Farce Fatancy
