literaturi

Literaturi is the field of study and the body of written works that are considered to express creativity, cultural identity, and human experience. It encompasses texts produced across languages and historical periods, including poetry, fiction, drama, and essays that employ language in distinctive ways. In Romanian, literatura means literature; literaturi may refer to literatures in the plural or to the scholarly study of literature as a discipline.

Literature develops within and interacts with cultures and civilizations. Scholars typically divide its history into periods such as antiquity, the medieval era, the early modern period, and modern and contemporary times. The study often distinguishes national literatures—like Romanian, English, French, Russian—and the broader field of world or comparative literature, which situates works in transnational conversation through translation and cross-border influence.

Genres and forms include poetry, prose (novels and short stories), drama, and hybrid or experimental formats. Literary analysis examines form, style, plot, character, voice, and narrative technique, as well as themes such as identity, power, morality, memory, and language. Methods range from close reading and philology to historical-critical, formalist, structuralist, and post-structuralist theories, as well as gender, race, and postcolonial perspectives.

Literatures influence education, culture, and media, and continue to evolve with globalization and digital media, translation, adaptation, and new forms such as digital literature. The study of literaturi thus bridges literature with history, philosophy, linguistics, and comparative culture, seeking to understand how texts reflect and shape human experience.