The importance and meaning of Literature
When we begin the study of literature, we find it has always two aspects, one of the simple enjoyment and appreciation and the other of analysis and exact description. Usually it happens when we go through literature in our classroom either by ourselves or by our teachers one thing matters very much and that is the importance of literature for students? Until our concept is not clear we can never understand what literature is? We need time and understanding to nurture our spirits.
I read somewhere in a short story of "The shell and the Book". A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sounds, strange, low, melodious sounds, as if the shell were remembering and repeating to itself the murmurs of its ocean home. The child's face filled with wonder as he listened.
Here in the little shell, apparently, was a voice from another world, and he listened with delight to its mystery and music. Then came the man, explaining that the child heard nothing strange; that the pearly curves of the shell simply caught a multitude of sounds too faint for human ears and filled the glimmering hollows with the murmur of innumerable echoes. It was not a new world, but only the unnoticed harmony of the old that had aroused the child's wonder.
So some such experience as this awaits us when we begin the study of literature with its two aspects of simple enjoyment and appreciation and the other if analysis and exact description. Like when a song appeals to the ear or a noble book to the heart we discover a new world for the moment, at least, a completely new world which is very different from our own world and it sees that we are in a place of dreams and magic.
"Behind every book is a man; behind the man is a race; and behind the race are the natural and social environments whose influence is unconsciously reflected”, this we must know, if the book is to speak its whole message. In simple word, we have now reached at the point where we wish to understand and enjoy literature, and the first step toward it is to know its essential qualities as exact definition is impossible.
In broader sense, perhaps literature means simply written records of the race, including all its history and sciences, as well as its poems and novels, and in narrower sense literature is the artistic record of life and most of our writing excluded from it. A history or a science may be a literature sometimes but only when we forget the subject matter and the presentation of facts in the simple beauty of its expression.
Qualities of Literature
The first significant thing is the artistic quality of all literature. All art is the expression of life in forms of truth and beauty or in another word which exist in this world and which remain unnoticed until bought to our attention by some sensitive human soul same like the delicate curves of the shell reflects sounds and harmonies too faint to be otherwise noticed. In the same pleasing, surprising way, all artistic work must be a kind of revelations architecture is probably the oldest creative work of arts and yet we still have many builders but few architects, that is, men whose work in wood or stone suggests some hidden truth and beauty to the human senses.
Suggestiveness
The second significant quality of literature is its suggestiveness, its appeal to our emotions and imagination rather to our intellect.
Permanence
The third characteristic of literature is arising itself directly from the other two and that is permanence.
The importance of Literature
It is a prevalent opinion that literature is like all arts is mere play of imagination, pleasing enough like a new novel without any serious or practical importance. Nothing could be farther from the truth, Literature preserves the ideals of a people and these ideal are love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom and reverence which are the part of human life most worthy of preservation.
Lastly in summary we can say Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty, it is the written record of man's spirit of his thoughts, emotions, aspirations, and it is the history and only the history of the human soul having characteristics of its artistic quality, its suggestiveness and its permanent qualities which will never fade. Literature can offer an insight into social commentary and critique. It can tell us alot of about society through the use of characterization and plot, and the themes in the novel. For example, Charles Dickens novels provide us with social commentry and deal with problems at that time such as children in the workhouse, crime, social conditions, etc.
Literature is almost like history, and you can learn a lot about history and the general views of the time. Literature also contains philospohical ideas as well, as well as narrative styles and how the use of language and narrative changed over the decades.
Jane austen wrote her novels using satire (that means taking the mickey out of society). Examples include pride and prejudice. Her writing style is also highly sarcastic in the way she describes certain people of high social ranking and how proud and vain they really are.
