Why We Must All Study British Literature
When we dip into the rich selection of novels
, poems, and plays which represent English Literature we are reading works which have lasted for years, or centuries, and they've survived simply because they are good. These works say anything worth expressing, and say it with art strong enough to endure while lesser works fall into obscurity.
Literature is section of our cultural history that may improve our lives in all kinds of ways, and that is easily offered to everyone. Once we've broken the boundaries that make studying literature appear difficult, we find that literary works could be entertaining, wonderful, funny, or tragic. They are able to convey wealth of emotion, profundity of thought, and insight into character. We are taken by them beyond our limited connection with life to show us the lives of other people at other times. They stir us intellectually and emotionally, and deepen our comprehension of our society, our history, and our own personal lives.
In good writing from the past we find the England of our ancestors, and we not just begin to see the land and the people as these were, but we also soak up the climate of the times through the language itself, its vocabulary, grammar, and tone. We'd just look at the writing of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Boswell, Dickens, and Samuel Beckett alongside to observe how the way authors use language represents the cultural atmosphere of their time.
Literature may also give us glimpses of much earlier ages. Glimpses of Celtic Ireland in the composition of W. W. Yeats, or of the Romans in Shakespeare's plays, for example, can take us in our imaginations back to the sources of our tradition, and the feeling of continuity and change we get from surveying our history enhances our knowledge of our contemporary world.
Literature can enhance our experience in other ways too. London, for example, is much more interesting a town when behind what we see today we start to see the London recognized to Boswell, Dickens and Johnson, or Shakespeare. When a landscape calls to head images from, say, Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, or Ted Hughes and our feeling for nature could be deepened.
The earth of English literature consists, besides anything else, of an astonishing array of characters, from the noble to the despicable - representations of people from all walks of life involved in all types of actions. Through their characters their observations are presented by great writers into human nature, and we might find that we may better comprehend people if we recognize in them qualities we've encountered in literature we know. Perhaps we see that a certain man's behavior resembles that of Antony in Cleopatra and Antony, or a certain woman is somewhat like The Wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Seeing such characteristics might help us to understand and accept other folks.
Good works of literature are not museum pieces, preserved and examined only for historical interest. They last since they stay fresh, transcending as well as embodying the time in that they were written. Each reader reading each work is a new and special function and the works speak to us now, telling us facts about human life which are highly relevant to all times.
We do not have to read far before we see that an author has represented a figure who is in some way like us, experiencing life-experiences in some way like our own and when we find ourselves swept up with the struggles of a character perhaps we are rehearsing the problems to come in our own lives. And when we are moved with a poem it may enrich us by adding words to feelings which had lain dormant for not enough a method of showing them, or been long-forgotten in the daily round of the workplace, the supermarket, the traffic jam, and the TV News.
We can acquire a lot from literature in many ways, but the when we feel the writer has communicated anything personally to us, one individual to another most rewarding experiences may come in those moments. Such moments will help validate our personal experience at a depth which is seldom achieved by everyday activity or the advertising.
So just why do we need to study English Literature, rather than just reading it? Well, we do not need to, however when visiting a country for the first-time it may help to have books by those who have been there before by our side.
When we begin to read literature, particularly older works, we have to acknowledge that we're not likely to get the immediate gratification that we have become used to from popular entertainment. We have to make an effort to provide to the writer's utilization of language, and to appreciate the thoughts he is offering. Critics might help us make that change, and will help fill in our understanding by telling us anything about the cultural environment in which a work was published, or concerning the individual conditions of the writer while he was writing it.
We are not likely to appreciate every literary work, and there may be times when we discover examining a critic is more useful than studying the actual work. Reading the work of a good critic could be edifying in itself. Spending some time to shape our own views in to an article is also an edifying experience, and just like great literature lasts, so do the particular benefits that people gain from learning and currently talking about it.
Whether we elect to examine it or read it for joy, when we look back over our literature we are looking back over incredible richness. Not merely museum items, but living works which we could buy in bookshops, borrow from the collection, or obtain on the internet and read today, right now.
by: Jessica Wicks
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