The AI-powered English dictionary
usually uncountable, plural literatures
The body of all written works. examples
The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group, or culture. examples
(usually preceded by the) All the papers, treatises, etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject. quotations examples
The obvious question to ask at this point is: ‘Why posit the existence of a set of Thematic Relations (THEME, AGENT, INSTRUMENT, etc.) distinct from constituent structure relations?ʼ The answer given in the relevant literature is that a variety of linguistic phenomena can be accounted for in a more principled way in terms of Thematic Functions than in terms of constituent structure relations.
1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 7, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 373
In fact, information on when each of the terms first appeared in English, and if obsolete, how long they persisted, is entirely absent from the literature.
2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 3
Written fiction of a high standard. quotations examples
However, even “literary” science fiction rarely qualifies as literature, because it treats characters as sets of traits rather than as fully realized human beings with unique life stories.
2008, Adam Cadre
(obsolete) Literacy; ability to read and write. quotations
They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject.
1854, Charles Dickens, Hard Times: A Novel