What is literary fiction?

There are two cumulative conditions to keep in mind in order to identify a work of literary fiction:

A- Understand that it is the opposite of commercial fiction.

B- Understand that it must possess at least one of the three artistically important characteristics in literature.

Part A: The Opposite of Commercial Fiction

To better understand what qualifies a literary text as literary fiction, it is essential to know that literary fiction cannot be commercial fiction.

(These qualifications do not mean that literary fiction cannot be sold.)

The primary goal of commercial fiction is to captivate the attention of its target audience for as long as possible. To achieve this, commercial fiction tries to meet the expectations of its target audience.

Alternatively, by observing the language used, the content presented, and the manner in which that content is presented, a work of literary fiction taken as a whole will be difficult to link to opinions such as: "the author of this work wrote this way or about this to better capture the attention of a target audience."

More specifically, all genres known to the public—drama, thriller, romance, fantasy, and others—are generally not literary fiction. However, it is possible to imagine a work that could be categorized within one of these genres without seeking to capture the attention of that genre's target audience (for more meticulous details on this kind of distinction, see the novel 'Flarne').

Part B : Artistically important features in literature

Literary fiction is characterized by a focus on at least one of the following three features:

1- The creative use of linguistic devices such as figures of speech

2- The use of features intrinsic to a textual medium to more effectively achieve the text's purpose. These intrinsic features of the textual medium correspond to the characteristics that the average reader inevitably experiences when reading a novel, a poem, or even a play, and which they can never experience in mediums such as film, for example, or even in written poetry or plays (if the book being read is a novel).

An example of a characteristic arising from the experience of reading a play in book form can be found in the following article:

https://www.flarne.com/en/the-weakness-and-strength-of-plays-in-books

Estimated reading time: 1 minute.

3. An emphasis on expressing intimate feelings arising from a perception of the external environment. (Not the physical description of objects and people, but rather the impressions perceived from the sensory experience with these objects and people—sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste).

Example :

‘I would like to describe her face, her ways and I cannot, because my own desire for her blinds me when she is near’.

Lolita,

Vladimir Nabokov

The reasons why each of these three traits is considered “artistically important” are explored in the novel ‘Flarne’. An article would take too long to do so, and would be far less convincing than what has already been meticulously illustrated in that story.

S.N. : The term ‘fiction’ in ‘literary fiction’ is slightly misleading because it is not necessarily fiction; a collection of poetry, for example, may very well have the two cumulative conditions described above.