Literary Studies

The work of the poet, novelist or dramatist begins by taking elements of the real world in order to transcend that world, to re-imagine it. The writer’s instinct is to create a fiction which reveals some form of truth. Ultimately, creative literature springs from a refusal to accept the world as it is, and perhaps language as it is. It seeks to create counter-worlds, even counter-languages.

What is literature? Or rather, what is the difference between literature and books? Books can be on a thousand different subjects, but we don’t call every book literature. I think that literature is fundamentally involved with creativity, in that the author’s motive for writing is to express something from within his mind or personality, something new, original and important. To write poetry or novels or drama, the three genres commonly regarded as literature, involves a greater degree of imagination than a book on economics, on the care of dogs, or a hotel guide. I think the crucial question is the degree to which any written work is concerned with subject-matter that is objective, outside the life of the writer. Such books can be regarded as describing of some aspect of hard reality, and their aim is reflect that subject as clearly and comprehensibly as possible. The poet, the novelist and the dramatist may indeed use elements of the world of actuality, but his real intention is to transcend that world, and offer his vision of alternative world. Literature of this kind, and the imagination which gives it birth, spring from a refusal to accept the world as it is, and a desire to create a counter-world. The creative writer should be out of step with his times: he or she should offer a criticism of the world of everyday reality, the world of sophisticated chaos which we now inhabit. A writer who tells us what we already know, and what we want to hear, is not achieving very much. Literature uses fiction to disclose some form of truth; it offers us redemption from the machinery of life which enmeshes us, and recalls us to the fundamental mysteries of existence. This is the primary meaning of literature, that it is a criticism and a re-imagining of life and of the world we have made. The writer is very much like the painter, who begins with elements of the real world and then in some way transforms them, opening our eyes to other possibilities. The literary books on this website range over poetry, the novel, Shakespeare, and classics of world literature.