15-Jul-2020
Let’s the authors speak! Oscar Wilde believes that literature is central to human life and asserts “Literature always anticipates life”. Similarly, Albert Camus perceives “fiction is the lie through which we all tell the truth.”
One should read more classic literature because doing so regularly ushers one to turn away from the virulent exposure of rage, indulgence and amusement that is mass media right now. Moreover social sites and apps have snatched all our time away from the habit of reading. A colleague once shared “While engaging and enlarging heart, soul, imagination and consciousness Classics always make a person reflect on the difference between the way things are and the way things ought to be.”
Literature whether studied in the classroom, or bedroom, park or in a train, read for pleasure or purpose, is central to our lives. It offers not only a chance to enlighten a person but also gives a chance to broaden one’s horizons and perspectives. Literature gives the perspective essential to find contentment and peace in communication with different people and credits department for providing a quintessential platform to develop and chisel her linguistic prodigy. Nevertheless, literature can also be used to enlighten, to persuade, to express emotion, or simply for enjoyment.
Cognitively we don’t just read great books — they read us as well. The human brain is complex and contradictory, layered like an ice-cream parfait, with flavours blending among the layers. A great novel reflects that complexity. We may read it several times and each time it is like going back to an old friend and gaining new insights. We put it down with new understandings of the world around us and, most important, of ourselves.
Important research on the effects of reading fiction found that reading literature modestly improves people’s capacity to understand and mentally react to other individuals and social situations. Fiction has a power that no other form of communication does: the power to insert the reader fully and completely in someone else’s mind. It is a meld between the mind of the reader and the writer, and the minds of the reader and character.
Thus, regarding numerous merits, benefits and multi-layered interpretations of literature I Henry James prolifically epitomizes literature “The house of fiction has not one window, but a million.”
Dr. Kaushal Kishore Sharma
Assistant Professor of English
Amity School of Languages
Amity University Jaipur
Amity School of Languages