Critical Comparison

Let's discuss about the similarities and differences between literature and performance and then between a play and a novel. Firstly, about literature and performance, the dictionary.com says that literature is "writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays", and performance is "a musical, dramatic, or other entertainment presented before an audience". By reading the definitions, we can see that they are pretty much different as literature is in a written form whereas performance is a production in front of audience which actually has an action. The things we have to look closely are, I think, the similarities. Fortunately, the definitions have already spoken about one of the similarities which is that they both are artistic, emotional, and entertaining. Usually literature is basically conveying one's (writer's and character's) emotion change throughout the plot in a artistic way to entertain the readers, and performance is delivering one's (actor's and character's) emotion through his or her action to entertain the audiences, so we can say in a big picture, they have a fundamental similarity. However, if we go under little more, we might be able to see another similarities. When we think literature and performance are both not real, and when we think about performance is usually based on some specific literature piece, now we are at the point. In my opinion, I would say literature is wider concept than performance. It is a little funny because they also have differences although performance is a component (I would say) of literature, but when we regard both as a fiction and performance usually is based on literature. It can be seen as a truth. 
Next, between a play and a novel, I also would like to see the dictionary.com definitions. Play is "a dramatic composition of piece" and novel is "a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes". The definition for novel was a little fancy but I would say it is just a really long fiction. And though I like the short and simple definition for play but I would add that it is designed specifically for performance. Their difference is pretty similar to the difference between literature and performance, which novel is in a written form and play is in a form of literally "play". Now for the similarities, if we take a look at the definitions that I have found so far, we can see the word "dramatic" more than once. Even if we cannot see that word, the definition is implying it. What the dictionary tried to say was, I think, all of them, which are literature, performance, play, and novel, are in the extension of each other. What I mean by this is all of each has its own characteristic that is pretty unique and makes itself special, but in the big picture, they are in the same line. 

Source
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2015.