Spiritual Values In English Literature

Every author is a product of his time; cultural realities of one’s country are subconsciously working at some level or the other in author’s mind. One cannot escape these realities and one’s social milieu. This may happen consciously or subconsciously. The author may not be consciously contributing towards the movement of the narrative which acquires autonomy of its own. Some kind of inner subversion takes place. The literature especially drama originated from religious traditions. According to Aristotle Greek Tragedy developed out of the improvised speeches of Greek Choral lyric originally connected with the worship of Dionysus sung by a choir. The representation of tragedies in Greece was an incident of public worship. The Altar of god stood in the center of the orchestra. It always had a religious background. The plays of Sophocles are based on Greek legends. English literature also has similar examples. The ancient literature is essentially religious in character. Every religion endorses some spiritual values. It is not that foreign authors are not influenced by spiritual values T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland and the poems of Yeats are the examples of

When Milton wrote paradise Lost and justified the ways of God to man he proved the point. When Eliot emphasized the importance of leading value based life and attributed the ills of life in 20th century to the sexual sins of man, he was influenced not only by the spiritual values of western culture but also Vedantic values of India. When the writers of western tradition are so much influenced by Indian Spiritual values, the Indian writers who are brought up in Indian traditional and cultural environment are naturally influenced by these values. Indian English literature is also influenced consciously or unconsciously by religious tradition. In the present paper, however, the focus will be on the spiritual values depicted in the novels of R.K.