Brief Overview of English Literature, part 1

Science and literature are alike and important subjects, because they last long and usually their key figures remain in our minds. The task of scientist is to be curious and ask “why”, he seeks the truth, that is, what lies behind the outward show. This can be useless in our average lives but not valueless. Truth is a value and beauty other. Thus, an artist surveys the beauty and a scientist searches for the truth. Both are one value that science and arts examine in different ways.

An artist’s production is intended to cause an artistic excitement in his audience. This prompts you to do nothing, but this leaves you content instead. The artist takes raw material and forces and coaxes it into a pattern. Unity, order, and pattern may be created by bringing together two completely opposed and unrelated ideas and fusing them.

The pleasure of finding an artist able to express our feelings for us is a kind of artistic experience of patterns. Any strong emotion has to be relieved. Thus, all the artists try to perform the same sort of task differing only in their methods.

Literature uses words as raw material both in artistic (word conotation) and non-artistic (word denotation) ways. The writer of literature does not restrict his words like a scientist must be clear and objective in his writings.

Literature has different branches and poetry is the most literary one because it makes the greatest use of literature’s raw material, namely, words. Poetry is further divided in three categories: 1) epic poetry, 2) dramatic poem, and 3) lyrical poetry. Unfortunately, the only kind of poetry left nowadays is the lyrical one.

English Literature is literature written in English, and not merely texts composed by people from England and British Isles. England is an island with varied landscape, and well separated four seasons. The local climate there has shaped the character of the English people then.

The English have preferred to invent their own writing forms and to have as many syllables as they wished in a line of a verse instead of following the existent rules. English literature has a freedom, a willingness to experiment a hatred of rules which has no parallel in any other litetarure.