Do you think Mangas/Manhwas/etc. can be considered as literature?

[Voldemin]

So can it be considered as a form of Literature? Or not because its mostly only made up of pictures and not wall of text?

Literature is creative writing of recognized artistic value for me..

I consider manga to be part art and part literature, it's like creative writing put into pictures. People plan these stories, possibly writing them out, and draw them, so why not? Manga is recognized almost all around the world and it's truly amazing. I even consider Western Comics and anything else considered as a graphic novel to be literature. It doesn't have to be educational, informative or anything else. People read it. It is of importance.
A picture is worth a thousand words.. -> an image can imply just as much as a wall of boring + written text
It's just a different form of expression imo

Or is it not because literature is a complete different genre? More like some comics? Only for entertainment?




Share your thoughts
Discuss

 

[Jack Dawson]

It might as well be....

[h0neanias]

Literature is a medium, not a level of quality. After all, there are lots of utterly abysmal books, yet they still belong. From this point of view, things -- in this case comics -- are better left to just be what they are. It's a question of naming, that is, a language game.

[denizen mars]

^agreed with sentiments about quality vs medium.

 

Yes. Of course 80% of them are plagued by mary sues and uncreative storylines and art.

[akisame]

Yes, I consider them to be a form of literature. If you don't consider Death Note as a form of literature, you must be smokin' somethin'

[Ulmicola]

Some of them.

[anh.]

not really

[MomoMoon115]

I'd say some of them are.

[hyunks]

Some of them definitely are

[иoиo]

maybe

[CALICO CAT]

there's a great bunch of shitty books out there that are classified as "literature" so I'd say yes, some mangas should definitely be considered as a form of it too

[нex]

No, it has nothing to do with quality, they are different mediums.

[Aoiyuri]

Well I suppose they are a form of literature, but the word literature automatically makes people think of works of value and meaning, works that invoke feelings within the reader and are articulate lol. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Aoiyuri

[flowsthead]

Yes.

 

This is a good response: https://www.quora.com/Are-comic-books-literature-Why-or-why-not

This is a pretty good BBC piece as well: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-24458521

 

Ignoring the subjective nature of deciding what has quality or not, all one has to do is look to the history of writing and written works to see that any definition of literature is going to be messy. From pictographs and hieroglyphs, to works like the Iliad that started out in oral form, to plays that are meant to be performed, the notion of what is a piece of written art is more than just the traditional novel. Plus, although the ratio is skewed one way, there are plenty of novels that have pictures in them. This is different from art in a museum. I think one could credibly argue that not knowing who the painter of a work is or what the title is does not detract from fully appreciating the work. But you cannot remove the writing from the comic and still maintain that it is the same work.

 

Also, on a personal level, I reject the notion that you can answer any genre or medium question with "some". Either all of it is art, or none of it is. It doesn't mean all art is of the same quality. Some of it may be good and some bad and some in the middle, and good can mean lots of different things related to craft. But what we define as "art" has to include the best and the worst.