Literary work (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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This page is just a dictionary entry, and doesn't cover any ground not covered by Literature. It was created as a stub in 2005 and remained unexpanded for a year before being converted into a redirect. It stayed a redirect for almost 20 years before @Piotrus changed it back into a stub. Except for some category maintenance, it hasn't been expanded. It needs to go back to being a redirect. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 17:51, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 20:00, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. It's a stub, with plenty of potential for development, as seen from the sources cited (the topic is notable, with plenty of WP:SIGCOV, and is the main article for Category:Literary works). Which is a different topic from literature (a bit more narrow - it's like saying we don't need article on car, because we have automotive industry...). It exists as an article in 13 other Wikipedias. It simply needs to be expanded. WP:AFDNOTCLEANUP (or explicitly: WP:IMPATIENT). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:45, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Expanded how? What's a thing that's a "literary work" but not "literature"? Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 13:43, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The concept of literature and a literary work are related but distinct ideas in literary studies. Literature is a broader concept encompassing not just literary works but also theories, genres, traditions, and critical perspectives on literature (ex. discussions about what qualifies as literature, its purpose, and its role in society). Literary Work is a more narrow concept, and refers to a specific piece of literature, such as a novel, poem, play, or essay. If you need an example. Concepts like steampunk, poetry, or rhyme are part of literature, but are not literary works. Literary works are specific works like [name a random book or poem here]. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:22, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  • Your automotive analogy is faulty. We have novel, short story, play, poetry, etc. for literature. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:22, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge. Just not seeing the separation here. Everything could be covered at literature. Hyperbolick (talk) 09:54, 1 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Hyperbolick The article is currently being expanded. Do take a look. Also pinging @Astaire, @Clarityfiend _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect. I don't think it's possible to expand this article any further without creating redundancy with Literature. Astaire (talk) 00:48, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Redirect because, as I have noted above, there are already articles on the various types of literary works, which are listed at Literature#Types. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:22, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I think it is possible to expand the article. And clearly some of you would be amazed at the amount that the world has written trying to define what a work is, and having wild disagreements with one another to the extent that they don't even agree about abstractions. literary work is to literature as work of art is to art and musical work is to music, to put it somewhat simplistically. Moreover there are several other definitions of literature (e.g. scientific literature, or the literature of a particular country or language) that do not apply to literary works; which our literature article is truly terrible at explaining, making it seem like they are the same thing to people who haven't read (for starters) Raymond Williams, Peter Lamarque, or Nie Zhenzhao on the subject. Uncle G (talk) 21:48, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Nobody refers to a scientific paper as a literary work. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:41, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Indeed, @Clarityfiend. That's exactly what Uncle G is saying. -- asilvering (talk) 10:23, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Clarityfiend You have never heard of ethnofiction? Not being sarcastic, it's pretty niche. But I wager that this subfield invalidates your argument here... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If it's expandable, then somebody would have expanded it by now. Find something, anything, to say about "literary work" that isn't redundant with "literature". Even one sentence would be enough to make your case. But if you can't write that one sentence, why even argue for saving the article? Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 23:45, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First, it existed only for a few weeks (as a stub). Second, a lot of very notable but a bit abstract concepts don't have Wikipedia articles yet. Third, you are conviniently ignoring the fact that a dozen+ wikipedias are prefectly happy to have articles on this (and literature), and nobody there is seeing the need to merge or delete them. Fourth, it seems Uncle G is expanding this right now. Please do take a picture of you WP:TROUTing yourself. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep your comments civil. If you can't be bothered, I can't be bothered to engage with you. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 11:54, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This was a joke, please. Best, Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 20:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If my last comment was a bit off, sorry. That said, I believe WP:TROUT applies to this nom. As well as a failure of carrying out a WP:BEFORE, or even reviewing the refs present in the article at the time it was nominated, each of which deals with the concept of "literary work" in a way that clearly meets WP:SIGCOV. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:51, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I make my share of silly mistakes on Wikipedia. But not this time. I took care to describe how this stub went unexpanded for a whole year, spent 20 years as a redirect, then another four months as an unexpanded stub. You chose to ignore all that and make fun of me. I'm not going to engage with you further. Isaac Rabinovitch (talk) 12:15, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Since in your post above you contradict yourself, treating four months as an entire year - yeah, I don't think there's much else I can say except what I already did. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:57, 6 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep - User:Uncle G has now expanded the article and its potential has become evident. My concern is that the article, due to the possible arguments about its scope, might become a magnet for controversy and use up editor time unproductively. If we follow Peter Lamarque, this page might have a solid topic but how many people follow Lamarque? EdJohnston (talk) 16:03, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think this discussion would benefit from a brief summary of what content might belong here but would not belong at the literature article. It would make it easier to make an informed decision about the merits of having a stand-alone article on the topic "literary work" (i.e. make a WP:PAGEDECIDE call). TompaDompa (talk) 19:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @TompaDompa, could this be it? Best, Reading Beans, Duke of Rivia 05:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That's why I'm asking. "The article can be expanded with this" is a partial answer, so to speak—are there other things it could also be expanded with? Or contrarily, could that instead be covered in the other article? TompaDompa (talk) 06:19, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Technically, literary work is a subset of a broader concept of literature (just like, let's say, science fiction film is a subtopic of science fiction). Here, we can discuss some topics (related to what is or isn't literary work, what are their characteristics, etc.) more broadly. For example, the idea that most scientific work is not literary work - encyclopedic nugget of information that does not need to be present in article on literature. And various other things mentioned in the article here, not mentioned in literature. Up to an including various definitions and disagreements regarding the very concept of literary work, which Uncle G discusses in his write up - important stuff that has little need of being merged or discussed extensively in article on literature (where at best a brief summary of this can be included). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:49, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  My answer below, as to "other things it could also be expanded with", would be "an additional thousand years of arguing about what is and is not a literary work," for which I can particularly think of material from the 18thC and the 1920s. (Also some material on whether letter collections are literary works.) In addition to adding sections on specific periods/debates, I think that would also lend itself to a section on commonly-cited characteristics of literary works, e.g., complex or elevated language; moral improvement of readers; non-commercial or non-political content; etc. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Ignore all rules for the bigger picture. I'm absolutely certain that our core readership - secondary school and college students - will be looking for this article. Bearian (talk) 16:04, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. As the current state of the article now shows, there is a large and somewhat exhausting body of scholarship debating what constitutes a "literary" "work". Getting into the details of this definition at literature would weigh that article down, as it is tasked with the already-large problem of summarizing everything else about literature. I think it would be useful to treat this as a spin-out of the current "Definitions" section at literature; accomplishing that effectively would expand literary work even further with a longer historical overview of these debates, since they didn't begin in the 20thC. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 23:06, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, UNITED BLASTERS (talk) 06:52, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect to Literature. A editor from mars (talk) 09:21, 8 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]