Literatureisthe expression of humans feelings, ideas, imaginations, thoughts, experiences, and emotions which are applied in beautiful language whose purpose is to entertain. Literature can be expressed by language, both oral and written. In other word, the medium of literature is language. The genres of literature arepoetry,prose, anddrama.

Literature is used when human use language in their communication. Its mean that the literature is used since Adam is created. Literature is the product of language. Without language we dont know about literature. Because, the expression of language produce literature.

Literature is different from scientific work. They can differentiate based on the purpose in making them. While the function of scientific work is to give information, and the literature is to entertain the reader.

The wordliteraturehas its etymological origin in'litra'or'written'.The advocates of this theory,ignore oral literature like legends, folk tales and such other works which have literary values. In literature the particular use of language as material like as stone is of sculpture and paint of painting .As inThe Nature of Literaturethe use of the language can be either literary or everyday use ;but this distinction is not satisfactory.Nature of literature emerges most clearly under the represential aspects.The centre of literary art is to be found in lyric,the epic,the drama, it isthe reference to a world of fiction,of imagination.Charactershave nopast ,no future and no continuity in life.time and space in a novel or drama are not those of real life.The distinguishing traits of literature are fictionality,invention or imagination.Literature grows out of life;but it is difficult to define it. Anything in print can be literature but it is not true. Historical study overlooks literary values;literary study has the emotional content predominant. Purely informative books have aesthetic points, Oral literature is part of literature as found in legends, myths, and ballads epics etc.Style and languagemake literature distinct as it is expression of emotion in words. Imagination and fictionalityare the distinctive features of literature,it is personal use or exercise of language.

Literaturecan be defined as an expression of human feelings, thoughts, and ideas whose medium is language, oral and written. Literature is not only about human ideas, thoughts, and feelings but also about experiences of the authors. Literature can be medium for human to communicate what they feel, think, experience to the readers.

There are many ways to define the term literature based on different point of views such as literature is art, literature is language, literature is aesthetic, literature is fictional,literatureis expressive, and literature is affective. Literature is everything in print. It means any writing can be categorized asliterature. Another way of defining literature is to limit it to great books which are notable for literary form or expression. Ellis (1989:30) defines literature asthe verbal expression of human imaginationand one of the primary means by which a culture transmits itself. Based on thus definitions, literature contains universal ideas, human imagination, and human interest that written in any writings and use language as medium to express humans ideas and feelings.

In conjunction with literature as art form, it is broken down into imaginative literature and non-imaginative literature.Imaginative literature and non-imaginative literatureare distinguished based onthe particular use made of language in literature. Language of imaginative literature is highly connotative and language of non-imaginative literature is purely denotative. The connotative meaning means words that used in literary works have feeling and shades of meaning that words to tend to evoke while denotative meaning means that the words refer to meaning in dictionary.

The language that is used by literature differ form ordinary spoken or written language.Literatureuses special words, structures, and characteristics. Primarily the language of literature differs from ordinary language in three ways: (1) language is concentrated and meaningful, (2) its purpose is not simply to explain, argue, or make a point but rather to give a sense of pleasure in the discovery of a new experience, and (3) it demands intense concentration from the readers. It indicates that the language of literature has originality, quality, creativity, and pleasure.

In this case, to differentiate between the literary texts and non-literary texts (imaginative and non-imaginative), Kleden (2004:7-8) states that literature can be differentiate based on the kind of meanings that exist in a text. Literary text consists of textual meaning and referential meaning and non-literary text only consists of referential meaning. The textual meaning is the meaning that is produced by the relationship of text itself. While referential meaning is meaning that is produced by the relationship between internal text and external text (world beyond the text).

From the use of language and the existence of meaning in literary works, it can be concluded that poetry, prose and drama are put in literary works article, journalism, news, bibliography, memoir, and so on can be categorized as non-literary works.

Importance of LiteratureIt is a curious and prevalent opinion that literature, like all art, is a mere play of imagination, pleasing enough, like a newnovel, but without any serious or practical importance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Literature preserves the ideals of a people; and ideals--love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence--are the part of human life most worthy of preservation.The Greeks were a marvelous people; yet of all their mighty works we cherish only a few ideals,--ideals of beauty in perishable stone, and ideals of truth in imperishable prose and poetry. It was simply the ideals of the Greeks and Hebrews and Romans, preserved in their literature, which made them what they were, and which determined their value to future generations. Our democracy, the boast of all English-speaking nations, is a dream; not the doubtful and sometimes disheartening spectacle presented in our legislative halls, but the lovely and immortal ideal of a free and equal manhood, preserved as a most precious heritage in every great literature from the Greeks to theAnglo-Saxons. All our arts, our sciences, even our inventions are founded squarely upon ideals; for under every invention is still the dream ofBeowulf, that man may overcome the forces of nature; and the foundation of all our sciences and discoveries is the immortal dream that men "shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."In a word, our whole civilization, our freedom, our progress, our homes, our religion, rest solidly upon ideals for their foundation. Nothing but an ideal ever endures upon earth. It is therefore impossible to overestimate the practical importance of literature, which preserves these ideals from fathers to sons, while men, cities, governments, civilizations, vanish from the face of the earth. It is only when we remember this that we appreciate the action of the devout Mussulman, who picks up and carefully preserves every scrap of paper on which words are written, because the scrap may perchance contain the name of Allah, and the ideal is too enormously important to be neglected or lost.