A great sage of ancient times said, “The function of literature is different from that of history. Literature is the revelation of beauty. Beauty is the expression of emotion and all such expression without any exception is beautiful.”
The historic aspect of literature cannot be ignored. Literature, like art and architecture, is one of the highest forms of human creativity and endeavor. The final product of this human creative art reflects the spirit of a particular age, like Victorian, Elizabethan, Colonial or pre-Partition ages.
Poets and writers of a certain period give expression to the prevailing attitudes, preferences and inclinations, and the way of thinking. Literature mirrors the society. People can recognize themselves in literature of their times.
It has been said that history is the biography of a nation and literature is its autobiography. Literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation and obviously it is the rise, growth and decline of ideas, percepts, and morals.
Commenting on ‘Madam Bovary’, French poet Charles Baudelaire said, “Flaubert has achieved in his first novel what his contemporaries could not in their entire works.” After the French Revolution, at a time when the French people were victims of extreme loneliness, in the character of Madam Bovary the author created a woman who escaped a dreary life, broke social taboos and defied enforced societal limits.
During this chaotic and disastrous time in the French history, people hated everything that was good, decent or even had a semblance of virtue. Class struggle was the order of the day and hatred of the rich segments of society was considered to be virtuous and noble.
It has been said that history is the biography of a nation and literature is its autobiography. Literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation and obviously it is the rise, growth and decline of ideas, percepts, and morals.
Literature depicts peoples’ ideas and culture. In ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, Harper Lee brilliantly brought out old ideas and new thoughts about racism and segregation. She cleverly depicted the clash of ideas and the subsequent violence in the society at the time.
In his book ‘The Spirit Of The Age’, William Hazlitt observed, “There was a mighty percentage of the heads of statesmen and poets, kings and people… it was a time of promise, a renewal of the world and of letters.”
The new slogans liberty, equality and fraternity is everywhere in the writings of Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, and other great writers. In the words of Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
Victorian age saw the great exponents of creativity in the form of Tennyson, Arnold, Browning and Hardy. In the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, we see industrial England, its great progress, mirth and sorrow. We find sweetness of domesticity in the works of Jane Austen. Human traits are seen in all their absurdities in the writings of Samuel Becket, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Wolf. The World Wars and the spiritual bankruptcy of the modern men are their primary focus.
In the great classic, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, Geoffrey Chaucer portrays the 14thcentury English society. Edmund Spenser’s ‘The faerie Queene’ is about an allegorical dream. The aim and object of this great epic is didactic. The poem is inspired with high seriousness and religious fervor of puritanism, giving us a fairly good idea of the English society of the time.
The greatest of all playwrights, William Shakespeare, in his plays both comedy and tragedies tries to reflect the Elizabethan life – its folk, middle class, courtly life and pomp. Everything is vivid in his plays. His famous play ‘Hamlet’, contains a famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be”, which is the most philosophical statement about conflict between passion and reason. It is in fact the very spirit of renaissance.
John Milton’s poem ‘Paradise Lost’ is revolutionary in content and form, where we find satan overwhelmed yet courageous.
The British culture during their time is more literary than ever before. The social, intellectual, literary and religious aspects of England are best exhibited in their texts. The romantic writers, however, live through much momentous changes in the political, economic, social and literary spheres. The idea of revolution informs the Romantic Movement. Many major writers of this period are aware that great changes are taking place around them and that these changes would inevitably find their way into literature as well.
With the help of literature, we travel into minds of other races and into other epochs. Once we are steeped in the spirit of a bygone age, we are able to enjoy even archaic books which otherwise would not appeal to us.
