It's a very broad topic. I don't know that much about literature, I just love to read in general and have read many books, including classics.
In your position, I think I'd try to pin it down a bit more. Possible questions for this might be:
- Do you want to study a specific country's or region's literature (such as English literature, French literature, Chinese literature, Spanish literature - just as examples)?
- Then, are you mainly interested in the specific literature's timeline, or want to study the known writers and their lives, or simply want to read as many books as possible from that literature section, with or without studying their author, background and interpretations?
- Another part of literature could be the development of language (which language, though?) and how it evolved over time.
- Then, as you already said, there's prosa, poetry, and that third one you said (I know what you mean). There are many technical details you could study. I don't know much about that, though, because I don't find it very interesting myself, but I'm sure that there's information about that.
- There's also fiction and non-fiction. You could focus on a specific genre (such as science fiction, horror, historic fiction, romance, dystopian, children's books, autobiographies, etc. etc. etc.)
That's all I can think of right now. Maybe it can help you to sort out your thoughts about it?
Once you know more what exactly interests you, there are many online resources and also online university courses, many even for free, I think. They usually have a specific topic, such as "Introduction to English literature", so it would be helpful for you to know a bit more specifically what interests you, and make a plan for yourself.
