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What is the function of literature?
Literature should convey timeless truths, thus distracting the masses from their immediate commitments, nurturing in them a spirit of tolerance and generosity. Education should be done through literature: “the pill of middle-class ideology was to be sweetened by the sugar of literature” (23).
2. Literature gives people a pride in their national language
3. Literature provides cheap education for poor people, that is why English literature first developed in in the Mechanics' Institutes, working men's colleges
4. Solidarity between the social classes, the cultivation of 'larger sympathies',
5. The transmission of 'moral' values. This is an essential part of the ideological project; indeed the rise of “English Literature” is more or less concomitant with an historic shift in the meaning of the term 'moral', of which Arnold, Henry James and F. R. Leavis are the major critical exponents. In other words, old religious ideologies have lost their force, but a more subtle way of communicating the moral values, one which works by 'dramatic enactment', literature, is developed.
How did literature help improve the condition of women?
6. Literature became a suitable subject for women, workers and those wishing to impress the natives. Literature helped women enter the universities: “since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feelings rather than with the more virile topics of bona fide academic 'disciplines', it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the professions” (24).
7. Literature transmits civilization and culture. High civilizations have had high literature.
8. Great literature is a literature open to Life, and what Life is can be demonstrated by great literature.
How did English Literature acquire its masculine aspect?
It served the colonialist purposes of England. The English could colonize overseas territories by
Literature should convey timeless truths, thus distracting the masses from their immediate commitments, nurturing in them a spirit of tolerance and generosity. Education should be done through literature: “the pill of middle-class ideology was to be sweetened by the sugar of literature” (23).
2. Literature gives people a pride in their national language
3. Literature provides cheap education for poor people, that is why English literature first developed in in the Mechanics' Institutes, working men's colleges
4. Solidarity between the social classes, the cultivation of 'larger sympathies',
5. The transmission of 'moral' values. This is an essential part of the ideological project; indeed the rise of “English Literature” is more or less concomitant with an historic shift in the meaning of the term 'moral', of which Arnold, Henry James and F. R. Leavis are the major critical exponents. In other words, old religious ideologies have lost their force, but a more subtle way of communicating the moral values, one which works by 'dramatic enactment', literature, is developed.
How did literature help improve the condition of women?
6. Literature became a suitable subject for women, workers and those wishing to impress the natives. Literature helped women enter the universities: “since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feelings rather than with the more virile topics of bona fide academic 'disciplines', it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the professions” (24).
7. Literature transmits civilization and culture. High civilizations have had high literature.
8. Great literature is a literature open to Life, and what Life is can be demonstrated by great literature.
How did English Literature acquire its masculine aspect?
It served the colonialist purposes of England. The English could colonize overseas territories by