Literature And Culture Analysis

The Sociology of Literature
I’ve read “Literature and Society”, a section extracting from Qian Jiaoru’s Essays in English Language and Literature, for several times. This section can be divided into three sub-categories, namely literature as a social phenomenon, relationship between literature and society, and role of literature in society. From Qian’s point, literature, rather than an IMITATION or a REFLECTION of society, is a RECREATION of human life, and to a great extent it is determined by the social conditions such as the political and economic systems, the reigning ideologies, the norms and conventions in human relations. Moreover, literature writes about social phenomenon with social implications, and is written by someone who belongs

The essential function of the REFLECTION theory was to “explain” in social and historical rather than individual terms the quality and greatness of literature, as well as its content, style, and forms. In effect, it emphasized social and cultural determinism instead of personal inspiration. To be sure, other phrases were often used, such as “expression of society” or “mirror of life”. In fact, literature truly embraces a wide variety of subject matter, representing “settings”, behavior patterns, and ideas in their complex interrelationships, on the other hand, pragmatic patterns have implications on literature, such as economics, family relations, climate and landscapes, attitudes, morals, races, social classes, political events, wars, religion, and many other more detailed aspects of environment and social life. It cannot be such easily defined that literature is the mirror or the reflection of society, literature always has something to do with policy, religion, sex with the use of symbol and figures of

The author mentioned the fact that “the literature of the pre-industrial society differs from that of the industrial society and the post-industrial society”, the reason is literature is written against its own social, historical, cultural, and personal background. The Iliad show its Greek audiences spirituality, sexual politics, code of machismo and overwrought violence; George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) claims that revolutions inevitably fail because those who come to power are corrupted by it and reject the values and principle they initially embraced; In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the monster, a man of parts, represents forbidden insights and the results of science without