Essay On Literary Fact

Tynianov did not use a structure, instead he tried to develop a system to proof that here is more to literature than the intuitive approach. He sets his main focus on the genre.

In his text „The literary fact“, he does not express clearly what the literary fact is. The essay starts with the scientific aspect of literacy. The term fact might characterize something that becomes a part of literary life with the time. An example would be letters. When letters are just everyday objects, and when they are a literary fact? Jane Austen wrote letters and a diary. These private entries from the author help to understand her Novels. Are the letters just mere letters or a piece of Literature? The same goes for Voltaires letters. He was a passionate letter-writer and every letter is a masterpiece. Are those letters literary facts?

In some cases, like with the letters of Jane Austen it can be said the change in the literary system helped the letters to gain importance. While during the time she wrote them, the letters seemed to be just letters, modern literary systems put more emphasis on letters and the means behind writing a story. When the

The narrator should not introse and drawing attention because this can cause an artifical touch to the novel. With concealing the presence of the narrator, James thought to create “better” novels, using Tynianov's terms, this would make the novel a higher genre. In the “Art of fiction” Henry James states that the novel is written to “attempt to represent life”4. Henry James was convinced that the illusion of reality is what a work of art should achieve. Refering to “The literay fact” genres swap places endlessly, but with all the changes the genre of the novel is not the same anymore. So it is not the genre by itself that changes from lower to higher, the genre is changing his characteristics and