Literary works

What "literary" means

Terry Eagleton argues that the category is largely circular: a work is literary because it is subject to literary criticism, and literary criticism only covers literary works. This roughly coincides with the stance of Lamarque and Stein Haugon Olsen, which is that a literary work becomes a literary work when a literary institution takes a literary stance towards it, and a literary institution, in its turn is a "rule-governed practice" whose rules determine what a literary stance is and how literary works are treated aesthetically. Lamarque states that literary works "are not 'natural kinds' but instutitional entities determined by social norms."