Art in Literature. Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature refers to writing considered to be an art form or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage. Its Latin root literatura / litteratura was used to refer to all written accounts. The concept has changed meaning over time to include texts that are spoken or sung, and non-written verbal art forms. Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature. Literature is classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction, and whether it is poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations. Definitions of literature have varied over time: it is a culturally relative definition. In Western Europe prior to the 18th century, literature denoted all books and writing. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to demarcate imaginative writing. Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to older, more inclusive notions; cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. The value judgment definition of literature considers it to cover exclusively those writings that possess high quality or distinction, forming part of the so-called belles-lettres tradition. This sort of definition is that used in the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition when it classifies literature as the best expression of the best thought reduced to writing. Problematic in this view is that there is no objective definition of what constitutes literature: anything can be literature, and anything which is universally regarded as literature has the potential to be excluded, since value judgments can change over time. The formalist definition is that literature foregrounds poetic effects; it is the literariness or poetic of literature that distinguishes it from ordinary speech or other kinds of writing. Jim Meyer considers this a useful characteristic in explaining the use of the term to mean published material in a particular field, as such writing must use language according to particular standards. The problem with the formalist definition is that in order to say that literature deviates from ordinary uses of language, those uses must first be identified; this is difficult because ordinary language is an unstable category, differing according to social categories and across history. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin literatura/litteratura learning, a writing, grammar, originally writing formed with letters, from litera/littera letter. In spite of this, the term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Literary genre is a mode of categorizing literature. A French term for a literary type or class. However, such classes are subject to change, and have been used in different ways in different periods and traditions. Main article: History of literature The history of literature follows closely the development of civilization. When defined exclusively as written work, Ancient Egyptian literature, along with Sumerian literature, are considered the world's oldest literatures. The primary genres of the literature of Ancient Egypt, didactic texts, hymns and prayers, and tales, were written almost entirely in verse; while use of poetic devices is clearly recognizable, the prosody of the verse is unknown. Most Sumerian literature is apparently poetry, as it is written in left-justified lines, and could contain line-based organization such as the couplet or the stanza, Different historical periods are reflected in literature. National and tribal sagas, accounts of the origin of the world and of customs, and myths which sometimes carry moral or spiritual messages predominate in the pre-urban eras. The epics of Homer, dating from the early to middle Iron age, and the great Indian epics of a slightly later period, have more evidence of deliberate literary authorship, surviving like the older myths through oral tradition for long periods before being written down.