BA I Semester Optional English Paper DSC 1.
Gulbarga University, Raichur University NEP Syllabus.
Literature
Literature and Life :
It was literature that made life beautiful and created the tales of romance and love. In fact, it is literature which has described the softer side of human beings. It has been the only medium through which human beings could ventilate and vocalize themselves. Be it victories of war or the discovery of new place, man sang, danced or told the story to the fellow folks. It was not only happiness but also sadness which made us express and that form of expression was called literature. And in the modern eras when it was not possible to complain, protest literature became the tool in the hands of the poets and writers and they became voices of the masses.
Therefore, literature is the only form of expression which has been the part and parcel of the human life. It is also because life is the raw material of literature and the events of the life, especially political ones, influenced and changed literature and vice versa is also the case that literature influenced life as well and became the harbinger of human habits and traditions that he called later as culture.
Life took a new turn because of decolonization induced mainly by World war I and World war II. Not only was there the war induced modernism followed by Postmodernism along with the new forms of English literature which were termed as literatures in English. The same was linked with the decolonization because Literatures in English emerged mainly from Former British and French colonies. The former literatures manifested in the poetic instances like the ‘Waste Land’ and ‘Love song of Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot and in the novels of Virginia Woolf. Woolf used the technique of ‘stream of consciousness’ and psychological analysis of her characters. Her ‘To the lighthouse’ is one such novel. But very soon the same moulded itself into Postmodern Literatures because of the intrusion of science fiction and discovery of the ancient magic tales. For example, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Marques.
Literature and Society :
Literature exhibits or in other words is the mirror of the society. It plays an exceptionally important role right from the history. Basically Literature reflects human activity in that particularly society. Literature helps to expose societal realities.
Most of the works in literature deals with the social issues in detail which helps people to realize the truth and think it in a different view than the people who don’t show their face to literature. It have a unique function in shaping and teaching society at huge. Literature carries the real events in the society and presents it as a mirror of the society so that people can view it and atone wherever it is necessary. Understanding how literature persuades the person and how it is reflective of individual’s society is something that should be given more consideration and thought. Shakespeare in Hamlet holds the view that the purpose of literature is “to hold the mirror up to nature”. Here the word nature indicates the broad spectrum of human nature.
Literature records the real life events from the society and converts these mundane activities into fiction and presents them to the society as a mirror in which people may look at their own images and make amends wherever necessary. But at the same time we must keep in view Aristotle‟s concept of literary imitation when he says: It is not the function of the poet to relate what has happened, but what may happen… The poet and the historian differ not by writing in verse or in prose…. The true difference is that one relates what has happened, the other what may happen… The world of poetry, it is said, presents not facts but fiction: such things have never happened; such things have never lived…. Not real but a higher reality, what ought to be not what is. Thus literature is not only a reflection of the society but also serves a beacon light which guide people to find the right path. In order to understand well how literature reflects the society it is necessary to observe the relationship between literature and society.
Literature and Science :
In ancient times, the education of the people of a country consisted of the study of language. Thus in ancient India, an educated man was a man of Sanskrit learning. Education is almost every country of Europe, in earlier times means nothing but the study of Greek and Latin. The beauty of natural scenery, our admiration for the great God who created this wonderful world, love, chivalry and heroic deeds of individuals and nations-these formed the earliest themes of ancient languages. Mental philosophy came next. Last came the science. In ancient Europe, Socrates and Aristotle first conceived the rudimentary principles of scientific thought and laid down the laws of accurate thinking. And, in modern Europe, it was the mastermind of Bacon that laid down the foundation of modern scientific investigation. Thus in ancient times, all education was literacy, and scientific education was of late growth.
It is, therefore, foolish to try to extol any one of these branches of knowledge to the detriment of another. All knowledge is one, just as the human mind, which grasps the various branches of it, is one. Each branch of study supplements the other, and each renders us substantial help in attaining a comprehensive understanding of the whole. Those who are eager to establish the superiority of scientific education over literacy by pointing out the wonders of scientific invention and by stressing on the material comforts which science have conferred on us fail to recognize the truth that these discoveries and inventions of science cannot make men happy without purer and nobler natural instincts and impulses to control and regulate them, those, again, who belittle the importance of these discoveries and inventions as being materialistic, forget that a deeper knowledge of the mysteries of physical nature gives us a nature. Thus the knowledge of the sciences imparts a sublimer tone to our poetry, history and philosophy and the study of these latter furnishes our minds with truths and inspirations that lead to the discoveries of natural science.
