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I'm looking for a word that can cover both fictional and non-fictional books as well as short stories, poetry etc.

I'm aware of "texts" which normally can cover all written media. "Prose" covers mostly fictional and non-poetic forms and leaves out non-fictional books too. "Literature" again is a bit too specific.

Is "texts" the only generic word or am I forgetting something?

Tsundoku
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Sam
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    Why is "literature" too specific? – henryflower Nov 02 '21 at 20:45
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    Hi and welcome to Literature Stack Exchange. It appears that there a few mistaken assumptions in your question. In linguistics, "text" can also includes the spoken word. Prose includes non-fiction that is not written in verse (not "normally" but "always"!). "Literature" is not a bucket into which you can sort specific types of texts; in fact, there is no definition of literature that allows you to do this. – Tsundoku Nov 02 '21 at 21:25
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    "Writing" or "writings"would seem to cover it. – MichaelMaggs Nov 03 '21 at 00:08
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    I’m voting to close this question because it is an English language usage question, not a literature question. – kimchi lover Nov 03 '21 at 14:01
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    @kimchilover At the surface level, the question may seem to be about usage, but it is perfectly possible to solve the misconceptions in the question on our site. – Tsundoku Nov 03 '21 at 15:07
  • It's not clear what OP is hoping to exclude. – Tom Apr 05 '22 at 23:38

2 Answers2

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There is no collective term for all the types of texts you have in mind that will work in all contexts. The term you use depends on how you approach those texts.

  • Discourse is a very broad term that covers all forms of communication that rely on language. It is broader than the types of texts that are usually considered "literary" since it also covers non-fiction. You may prefer this term if your approach to texts can be described as discourse analysis, focusing mainly on the socio-psychological characteristics of the author or speaker.
    (Discourse originally referred to "any extended use of speech or writing"; since Michel Foucault it also refers to "any coherent body of statements that produces a self-confirming account of reality by defining an object of attention and generating concepts with which to analyse it (e.g. medical discourse, legal discourse, aesthetic discourse)". See "Discourse" in Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, second edition, Oxford University Press, 2001.)
  • Literature is the term you may prefer if you practise literary criticism. The term is not limited to prototypical literary genres such as lyrical, dramatic and narrative texts; non-literary texts have also been studied using methods developed for literary criticism, for example, looking for literary devices, rhetorical techniques, ambiguity, etc. As explained in another answer, literature is not defined by means of categories of text or textual features but by a way of approaching texts.
  • Text is the fall-back term that will always work because it is very general. The term is used a lot in literary criticism and in other types of analysis, including discourse analysis. "Text" is obviously also a term used in the context of textual criticism, "a branch of literary scholarship that attempts to establish the most accurate version of a written work by comparing all existing manuscript and/or printed versions" (see "Textual criticism" in Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, second edition, Oxford University Press, 2001). Note that in the context of linguistic study, the spoken word can also be treated as text.
  • Narrative is a term that covers only a subset of the types of texts that can be referred to as "discourse", "literature" or "text". Narrative is "a telling of some true or fictitious event or connected sequence of events, recounted by a narrator to a narratee (although there maybe more than one of each)". It is therefore distinct from "dramatic enactments of events". Lyric poetry isn't narrative either. (See "Narrative" in Chris Baldick: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, second edition, Oxford University Press, 2001.)
Tsundoku
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Here's a list of terms that can encompass "fictional and non-fictional books as well as short stories, poetry etc.", but some of them are specific to certain contexts or are more often used for other things:

  • Creative work
  • Writing (as MichaelMaggs said in the comments)
  • Work
  • Composition
  • Written work
  • Arrangement
  • Creation
  • Content
  • Concoction
  • Manuscript
  • Presentation
  • Piece
  • Piece of writing
  • Art
  • Production
  • Draft
  • Invention
  • Entry
  • Publication
  • Brainchild
  • Document
  • Script
  • Transcript
Brōtsyorfuzthrāx
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