Literature & Civilizations Definitions

I interviewed my brother and his roommates on what they thought the definitions of literature and civilizations were. They came to a pretty clear consensus. All in all, they viewed literature as written works that display some type of meaning. In addition, they saw civilizations as groups of people living with one another. My brother added the fact that he viewed civilizations as a system of people that have a governing body or some type of order. They thought that in this class we would be surveying literary works throughout different civilizations in order to compare and contrast.