Writing, in prose or verse, regarded as having permanent worth through its intrinsic excellence; encompassing the entire body of a people's work, from the heroic and agonic to fin-de-siecle and dada, including contextualism, expressionism, classicism, neoclassicism, impressionism, minimalism, naturalism, new wave, modernism, postmodernism, realism, surrealism, regionalism, romanticism, neoromanticism, eroticism, symbolism, verism. Of the thousands of oral languages used during the past 50,000 years of human development, only 106 made a commitment to writing sufficient to have produced literature; and of the approximately 3,000 surviving languages, only 78 modern tongues have any literature. Speech and rhetoric are in the tradition of disciple or apprenticeship of mastery by imitation of proven authority, but text is substantial in itself ... literature serves as substantial proof, therefore what is written becomes irrefutable truth. A multiplicity of modes of expression tends to extend diversity at the expense of depth; hence pluralism increases breadth while decreasing depth, inevitably resulting in a new homogeneity. See athenaeum, renaissance, enlightenment, anthology, essay, poetry, prose, belles-lettres, roman a clef, novel, classic, bildungsroman, picaresque, stream of consciousness, metafiction, hypernovel, historiography, feuilleton, gray literature, OULIPO, intelligentsia, mentor, immortals; compare orality. Also, professional literary work or production; as any kind of printed material, including circulars, leaflets, handbills, brochures, or pamphlets. See chapbook, newsletter, tabloid, fugitive materials, lexigram.