Literary forms are the basic building blocks of literary systems. They have evolved alongside literature as tools for adding meaning to a text. Most canonical examples of literature are marked by an exuberant use of literary forms.
Like an architect uses a design pattern to add a feature to a building, an author uses a literary form to add a sensation, emotion, correlation, or other connection to a text. Examples of common forms are metaphor, allusion, interior monologue, citation, exposition, hyperbole, analogy, and so on.
A literary system, then, is a method common to many works of literature, which guides them in adding layers of meaning to their texts. Literary systems may be formal or informal, highly structured methodologies or loose
rules of thumb that have built up over long periods of use. Literary systems are thus constructed prescriptively by a standard set of forms in the author’s toolbox, and descriptively by a body of work which shines a guiding light on well-trodden paths, living in the system, demonstrating how texts play against each other in specific ways. In the highly evolved (in the sense of specificity and specialization) system of critical theory, for example, essays and books can play off each other in ways that are not possible in the literary system of potboiler crime novels.
Literary systems are by no means confined to the usual domains of conventional literature. Following the yardstick definition that literature is text with high density of meaning, other paradigms lend their own great works to useful literary interpretation. This concentration studies the differences among literary systems across languages and disciplines. Traditional literature can be enriched by adopting forms from its sisters, and formal writing (such as computer programs) can become more elegant, efficient, and maintainable by borrowing forms from novels and short stories. Using fiction, Spanish literature, essays, and computer code, I want to cross-pollinate the dazzling array of literary systems that tend to exist in isolation.
