article on literature reflects the spirit of the ages
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Actually, the saying is: “Literature reflects the spirit of the age.” The idea is that poets and writers give expression to the general attitudes, way of thinking, inclinations, and preferences of the times in which they live.
Literature holds a mirror up to society. That is to say, literature helps society to see itself in much the same way as a mirror helps a person to see his or her face. This is another way of saying that people can recognize themselves in the literature of their times, just as an individual can recognize himself or herself in a mirror. It is in this sense that literature reflects the spirit of the age.
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It is often said that history is the biography of a nation while literature is its autobiography. Truly speaking an author is as much a product of his society as his art is product of his own reaction to life. Literature reflects ‘zeitgeist’ or the time-spirit. Every man, according to Goethe’s statement, is the citizen of his age as well as of his country. Literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation and obviously it is the rise, growth and decline of ideas, precepts and morals. Thus literature becomes a sort of sociological approach, a supplementary and commentary on history. As the pearl is the product of the oyster shell, literature is the product of the society.In the overview of Western critical thought we find both ancient and modern critics who directly relate the literature to the life and manners of the society. Way back into the 5th century B.C Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher and critic says that the nature of the universe is imitation and Plato compares poets to bad man, and calls them an imitator of an imitation. However, we can see the irony of the fact that Plato is not above using the power of poetry for his own ends. Plato definitely believes that poetry has power, and that power make people want to imitate what they saw in art. Aristotle, like Plato, sees Art as imitative, but, unlike Plato, sees it as imitating essence, rather than audience. Therefore, Art is actually higher on the chain than the empirical world, and elevates rather than lowers us. Longinus's On the Sublime is all about how to maximize transport or elevation since, according to Longinus that is the one true character is tic of great art.Sidney in his Apology For Poetry states that poetry blends the universal and the particular along with the capacity to inspire us to noble action. Arnold in his Essay in Criticism defines poetry, criticism and culture almost interchangeably. Poetry, to him, is at bottom a criticism of life’. Though the theories differ, more or less the texts of English literature must be analyzed as the larger story of English social life – the rise and mission of a nation. In fact it is true for all nations and continents.