What is Literature?

What is Literature?

                            As per my view, Literature is those oral and written works which address in significant ways universal elements of what it means to be human because “Literature is an artistic expression of life”.  Good literatures endures because it demonstrates craft and artistry and has the power to raise questions, provide fresh points of view, and expand the understanding of self and the world, stimulate the imagination, and renew the spirit. Although it is primarily print-based, literature may be experienced through a variety of media, too.

                          Literature study focuses on the personal, cultural and historical interpretations as well as artistic analysis of a broad range of works. It narrates the otherwise unnoticed things and experiences artistically. It makes reader one with the subject in question. It changes our perception of it that moment onwards. It brings the higher and nobler and eternal reality to the reader. In that way, it makes the reader nobler and more sensible people. If one reads Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, is it possible to him/her not to feel the eternal quality (i.e. of love, joy, or anything) when he/she come across a beautiful painting? Literature dispels the “maya” (allusion) of this worldly life and let the inner light brighten your life and makes you simpler and ethereal. The reader surely gets the divine pleasure with it. As the great literature has universality, he can get the absolute truth by reading it.

v Conclusion: Understanding the past is very much needed to the understanding of the present and the future as well. So, by reading literature, we can understand what and how the past-lived-noble-souls felt about various situations and experiences and we can better face our situations and experiences. So, by reading literature, we can live nobler and happier by using the knowledge of the past.