04. Why Read Literature?

Language in both its written and spoken forms is primarily used as a tool for communication. Apart from this use which I. A. Richards calls the "scientific" use of language, it responds to human psychological demands for aesthetic and emotional satisfaction. In a narrow sense, literature is the "emotive" use of language. According to Aristotle, literature refers to any kind of composition, in prose or verse, and its purpose is the giving of pleasure through some use of inventive imagination in the employment of words. When language is used in a special, refined way, it becomes literature. If it is denied its usefulness, it has its beauty. "Beauty is its own excuse for being."

Literature is an expression of society; it represents life. Literature, at any given time, mirrors society, for a writer inevitably expresses his experience and conception of life. Jane Austen, in her novels, expresses the very essence of the eighteenth century: its sense of morals and social standards and its suspicion of uncontrolled emotion. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare views with good-natured amusement the characteristics of the common people who are in fact Londoners transferred to the streets of Rome. They are good fellows, easily led. Political philosophy does not concern them and they have not grievances, but they are not indifferent to great political personages. They are fickle-minded and they are guided more by emotion than by reason.

Invariably, a writer has a message for the world. There is a relationship between literature and life. The writer's message may have a beneficial effect on our lives and this may help us to live out our lives successfully. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's message is that while the old should be respected, it is not good for them to force their children into marrying against their will. Lovers, to be happy, their love should be mature; love that exists only in imagination is blind. Frequently literature is thought of as a form of philosophy.

Novels form a part of literature and one of the fascinations of novels is the "illusion of reality". After all it is mainly the possibility for escapism that makes people read novels. This willing suspension of disbelief is made possible by the portrayal of character, for no matter how believable the action may be in itself, it does not win the reader's free credulity unless it is performed by distinct individuals who are recognisable in terms of our experience. He will believe in action that is inherently impossible so long as the participants behave in a natural manner. A novel provides something more than a simple tale, however amusing and spirited it may be. Fielding's Joseph Andrews lives by virtue of the extraordinary vitality of characters and the picture it gives of the early 18th Century England. The fights and verbal tirades, the love-making and the beef that is consumed and other things make his novel reflect the life of his age. The novel holds the mirror up to life. There is the rather exaggerated view that novelists can teach us more about human nature than the psychologists. One might say that great novels are source books for psychologists.

Literature reveals the social prominence and status of the writer and also his social ideology. Literature gives us an insight into the life of his audience. Literature is a social document and modem readers derive their chief impressions of foreign societies from the reading of novels. Literature can be made to yield outlines of social history. We learn about the Elizabethan middle class from the writings of Ben Johnson and Thomas Deloney. Dickens depicts the Victorian world, Galsworthy the English upper middle class and Wells the lower middle class.

Literature, especially the drama and the poem, has acknowledged therapeutic and cathartic properties. There is a parallelism between literature and the fine arts. Literature, like Mozart's minuet or a landscape by Watteau, can make us feel light-hearted and gay. Therefore, it is gratifying to note that reading of literature continues in spite of other forms of entertainment and relaxation.