The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

conclusive (Hernardi 1978; Robson 1982; Attridge 2004; for a perspective from classical
authors, see Too 1998; Haliwell 2002; Martindale 2005).
A general consensus in modern theory is that literature should be defined as any written
work that is highly valued by an individual: “value is a transitive term: it means whatever is
valued by certain people in specific questions, according to particular criteria and in the light
of given purposes” (Eagleton 1996: 11). The success of a piece of „literature‟ is reliant upon
an individual‟s experience upon reading it, and what delights and interests one person may be
utterly un-delightful to the next. This is where the definition must end, since further
investigation meets with little consensus, whether this be in the taxonomy of „literary‟ genres
or devices, specifically language, that make works literary. As Martindale noted:
“conservatives today habitually try to ring-fence literature with some notion of „literarity‟
[…] the frequent claim that „non-literary‟ language is purely instrumental […] is simply
false” (2005: 73). He continues: “among the arts „literature‟ (itself a historically variable
category) is often said to be among the more impure, and certainly it is bound up, in complex
ways, with most of the discourses and practices that comprise a culture” (ibid.: 122).
This thesis is not a suitable forum to expound a definition of „the literary‟, a process
that would nevertheless appear to be impossible. However, it is sufficient to state that
„literature‟ is a term that more often than not creates more problems than it solves. If it is
accepted that the concept of literature is un-helpful due to its lack of definition, then the
damage of employing such boundaries to categorise sources is immediately apparent. 273
273 Hurtado, for example, in discussing early Christian manuscripts, wrote, “I have restricted myself
here to texts that can be regarded as „literary‟, but even so I have been a bit generous” (2006: 24).
Exactly what he meant by such „generosity‟ is unclear, but the example nevertheless demonstrates the
vacuity that operates in agreement as to what is „literature‟: it is all too often based upon a vague
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