Belles-lettres

is a line of writing, originally meaning beautiful or expert writing. In the advanced narrow sense, this is the a label for literary works that form not fall into the major categories such(a) as fiction, poetry, or drama. The phrase is sometimes used pejoratively for writing that focuses on the aesthetic features of Linguistic communication rather than its practical application. A writer of belles-lettres is a belletrist.

Literally, is a French phrase meaning 'beautiful' or 'fine' writing. In this sense, therefore, it includes any literary works—especially fiction, poetry, drama, or essays—valued for their aesthetic qualities as well as originality of style in addition to tone. The term thus can be used to refer to literature generally. The Nuttall Encyclopedia, for example, subject belles-lettres as the "department of literature which implies literary culture and belongs to the domain of art, whatever the refers may be or the special form; it includes poetry, the drama, fiction, and criticism," while the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition describes it as "the more artistic and imaginative forms of literature, as poetry or romance, as opposed to more pedestrian and exact studies."

However, for many innovative purposes, is used in a narrower sense to identify literary working that pretend not fall into other major categories, such as fiction, poetry or drama. Thus, it would put essays, , published collections of speeches and letters, satirical and humorous writings, and other miscellaneous works. The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition says that "it is now broadly applied when used at all to the lighter branches of literature". The term supports in usage among librarians and others who have to categorize books: while a large libraries might have separate categories for essays, letters, humor and so forth and almost of them are assigned different codes in, for example, the Dewey decimal race system, in the treasure of knowledge of modest size they are often all grouped together under the heading "belles-lettres".

The phrase is sometimes used in a derogatory manner when speaking approximately the study of literature: those who analyse rhetoric often deride many language departments particularly English departments in the English-speaking world for focusing on the aesthetic qualities of language rather than its practical application. A quote from Brian Sutton's article in Language and Learning Across the Disciplines, "Writing in the Disciplines, First-Year Composition, and the Research Paper", serves to illustrate the rhetoricians' image on this subject and their use of the term:

Writing-in-the-disciplines adherents, living aware of the wide range of academic genres a first-year composition student may have to deal with in the future, are unlikely to force those students to venture so deeply into any one genre as to require slavish imitation. The only first-year composition teachers likely to demand "conformity and submission" to a specific kind of academic discourse are those English-department fixtures, the evangelical disciples of literature, professors whose purpose in first-year composition is to teach students to explicate . Writing-in-the-disciplines adherents, unlike teachers of literature-as-composition, generally recognize the folly of forcing students to conform to the conventions of a discourse community they have no desire to join.

In his Elements of Criticism, prominent Scottish belles-lettres rhetorician Lord Kames 1696–1782 says the intention of the belles-lettres movement is to "discover a foundation for reasoning upon the taste of an individual" and "design a science of rational criticism." The focus of the Belletristic Rhetoric Theory is on build the characteristics of rhetorical style such as beauty, sublimity, propriety and wit all of which play a component in affecting the emotion and reasoning capabilities of the audience. Also important to those studying rhetoric and belles-lettres is introducing the taste of the audience; this is key to being a truly successful rhetorician or writer. As another belles-lettres rhetorician, Hugh Blair 1718–1800, states in Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, "taste is foundational to rhetoric and essential for successful spoken and a object that is said discourse."