When we immerse ourselves in the rich variety of novels, poems, and plays that make up English literature, we are reading works that have lasted for generations or centuries, and they have lasted because they are good. These works say something worth saying, and they say it with art strong enough to survive while lesser works fall into obscurity.
Literature is part of our cultural heritage that is freely available to everyone and can enrich our lives in all sorts of ways. Once we’ve broken down the barriers that make studying literature seem overwhelming, we discover that literary works can be entertaining, beautiful, funny, or tragic. They can convey depth of thought, richness of emotion, and insight into character. They take us beyond our limited life experience to show us other people’s lives at other times. They move us intellectually and emotionally, and deepen our understanding of our history, our society, and our own individual lives.
In the great writings of the past we find the England of our ancestors, and we not only see the country and the people as they were, but we also soak up the climate of the time through the language itself, its vocabulary, grammar and tone. . We would only have to consider the writing of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Boswell, Dickens, and Samuel Beckett to see how the way the writers use language embodies the cultural atmosphere of their time.
Literature can also give us glimpses of much older times. Glimpses of Celtic Ireland in the poetry of WB Yeats, or of the Romans in the works of Shakespeare, for example, can lead us in our imaginations to the roots of our culture, and the sense of continuity and change we get from examining our history. increases. our understanding of our modern world.
Literature can also enrich our experience in other ways. London, for example, is an all the more interesting city because behind what we see today we see the London known by Dickens, Boswell and Johnson, or Shakespeare. And our feeling for nature can be deepened when a landscape brings to mind images of, say, Wordsworth, Thomas Hardy, or Ted Hughes.
The world of English literature consists, apart from anything else, of an astonishing variety of characters, from the noble to the despicable: representations of people from all walks of life engaged in all manner of pursuits. Through their characters, the great authors transmit their knowledge about human nature, and we can discover that we can better understand the people we meet if we recognize in them the characteristics that we have found in literature. Perhaps we see that the behavior of a certain man resembles that of Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, or that a certain woman is more like The Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Seeing such similarities can help us understand and accept other people.
Good literary works are not museum pieces, preserved and studied solely for their historical interest. They last because they stay fresh, transcending and embodying the era in which they were written. Each reader reading each work is a new and unique event and the works speak to us now, telling us truths about human life that are relevant for all time.
We don’t have to read long before we find that a writer has portrayed a character who is in some ways like us, confronting life experiences in some ways like ours, and when we find ourselves caught up in a character’s struggles perhaps we are rehearsing the struggles. to come in our own lives. And when a poem moves us, it can enrich us by putting words to feelings that had remained dormant due to lack of a way to express them, or forgotten in the day-to-day work, the supermarket, the traffic jam, and the television news.
We can gain a lot from literature in many ways, but the most rewarding experiences can come from those moments when we feel that the author has communicated something to us personally, from one individual to another. Such moments can help validate our personal experience to a depth rarely achieved in everyday life or the media.
So why do we need to study English literature, instead of just reading it? Well, it’s not necessary, but when visiting a country for the first time it can help to have books by people who have been there before by your side.
When we start reading literature, particularly older works, we have to accept that we are not going to get the instant gratification that we have grown accustomed to from popular entertainment. We have to make an effort to adjust to the writer’s use of language and to appreciate the insights he is offering. Critics can help us make that transition, and they can help fill out our understanding by telling us something about the social climate in which a work was written, or about the author’s personal circumstances while writing it.
We are not going to enjoy every literary work, and there may be times when we find reading a review more interesting than reading the actual work. Reading the work of a good critic can be edifying in itself. Making the effort to put our own thoughts into an essay is also an uplifting experience, and just as good literature lasts, so do the personal benefits we derive from studying and writing about it.
Whether we choose to study it or read it for pleasure, when we look back at our literature we are looking back at an incredible wealth. Not just museum pieces, but living works that we can buy in bookstores, borrow from the library, or download from the Internet and read today, right now.
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