Literature is the medium people use to communicate past, present, and future information to an audience through books, articles, and other forms of literary art. Literature affects everyone because everyone has read a book or looked at a graphic novel at some point in their life and then changed their opinions to what their life should look like as well as their opinions for how society should act afterwards simply because of what was written. Throughout history, literature has impacted society from the way people treat others, changes within themselves, as well as decisions that impact society as a whole.
Since the beginning of history, gender has had an impact on people’s opportunities in life. Literature has decided what those impacts are through providing examples in novels. One instance of this is seen in the Aeschylean Trilogy of Oresteia. Froma I. Zetlin, author of Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature, notices that the trilogy challenges society’s view on women in the household. In Oresteia, there is a group of women who try to escape their abusive suitors to Argos, and Zetlin states:
In so doing it confronts more starkly the normative position both of women in marriage and of marriage in society and the designated means to ‘domesticate’ the nubile young girl, bringing her from a condition of wildness to accept the ‘civilizing’ yoke of matrimony. (124)
Zetlin says that the trilogy Oresteia challenged the outside world to think that women might not only be for the house, but can thrive on their own as well. Wendy Griswold, author of the academic journal of Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature, also believes that literature is shaping the way people treat people of certain gender. Griswold says “Feminist studies of women reader and women’s genres brought reception aesthetics and the new popular culture together most fruitfully” (Griswold). She argues that books about female rights have shaped people’s views on what a female should and shouldn’t be able to do.
Literature didn’t just impact gender norms, but also effected the social statuses all around the world. Itmar Even-Zohar examined how authors were praised the article The Role of Literature in the Making of the Nations of Europe: a Socio-Semiotic Study. Even-Zohar found that “In the Medieval Middle East, Arabs were considered to be ‘gifted’ in respect to this occupation [writers of stories and recorded history,” and “in Northern Europe, it was the Icelanders who were taken to be ‘born’ writers and story-tellers.” (Even-Zohar). There are many examples in history that prove that people’s statuses weren’t just influenced by the words written down, but by the importance of making sure that it did get written down.
POINT TWO: THE EFFECTS ON DECISION MAKING IN THEMSELVES
An important part of the human being is the culture of the individual, known as cultural memory. Literature provides three things into it, according to Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney in Literature and the Production of Cultural Memory:
…we see literature as having three roles to play in the production of cultural memory. These roles comprise 1) literature as a medium of remembrance; 2) literature as an object of remembrance; and 3) literature as a medium for observing the production of cultural memory (Erll and Rigney)
Erll and Rigney show that literature is something used by society to record down, like a reflection, what society looks like, therefore it can later influence a future generation. The two also say that cultural remembrance is always changing and “…collective memories are actively produced through repeated acts of remembrance using both a variety of media and a variety of genres” (Erll and Rigney).
Many people look out to several examples in order to make decisions about themselves. Literature is an illustration of this because many people read about scenarios and it inspires people to do act in a certain way. Leo Lowenthal, author of Literature and the Image of Man, noticed that when something is written down, someone is bound to allow the authors voice to be heard. Lowenthal expands by saying:
By this very process of selection- an aspect of creativity that is most relevant to the theme of this book- he [the writer] presents an explicit or implicit picture of a man’s orientation to his society: privileges and responsibility of classes; concepts of work, love, and friendship, of religion, nature, and art. (10)
Lowenthal states that an author’s writing can shape what they think simply based off of the picture they paint in their writings.
POINT THREE: THE EFFECTS ON DECISION MAKING IN SOCIETY
There are three proposed ways that literature impacts society as a whole. Milton Albrecht, author of The Relationship of Literature and Society proposed:
One hypothesis is that literature “reflects” society; it’s supposed converse is that literature influences or “shapes” society. A third hypothesis is that literature functions socially to maintain and stabilize, if not to justify and sanctify, the social order, which may be called the “social control” theory. (Albrecht)
The first proposed hypothesis states that literature is based off of the actions of society. The second hypothesis proposes the opposite of the first: that literature influences society. The third proposes that literature is like a check system for society. It proposes that society uses literature to base standards off of.
Authors can have a very important role in society because they have the power to shape the way people think. An example of an author who used that power was George Orwell. In the article Orwell of Literature and Society written bu J.P. O’Flinn, the author notices now only how Orwell influences his audience, but that “The relationship between a writer and his society moves on two obvious levels: society both influences and is influenced by its writers” (O’Flinn). O’Flinn states that literature can shape society and society can also shape the way authors think.
“Against the forces that denied the relevance of material factors, certain currents of thought supported a reconceptualization of the relationship between literature and society.”
“Some of the light that literature can shed upon its environing society and underlying culture can extend our knowledge and appreciation of literature itself, by reason of the relationship between the literary work of art and its external context.”
“Proponents of reception aesthetics argued that the reader never comes to a text as a blank slate but instead places it against what Jauss (1982) termed a “horizon of expectations”.”
In the end, Literature is something that influences society in several ways and people tend to forget that Literature is even there.
Works Cited
- Erll, Astrif and Rigney, Ann. “Literature and the Production of Cultural Memory: Introduction, European Journal of English Studies.” Taylor and Francis Online, 2006
- Even-Zohar, Itamar. “The Role of Literature in the Making of the Nations of Europe: A Socio-Semotic Study.” Applied Semiotics / Semiotique Appliquee
- Fergusen, Priscilla Parkhurst, et al. “Editor’s Introduction: Mirrors, Frames, and Demons: Reflections on the Socioogy of Literature.” Critical Inquiry, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 421-430. JSTOR, JSTOR
- Griswold, Wendy. “American Character and the American Novel: An Expansion of Reflection Theory in the Sociology of Literature.” American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 4, pp. 740-765
- Griswold, Wendy. “Recent Moves in the Sociology of Literature.” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 19, pp. 455-467
- Lowenthal, Leo. “Literature and the Image of Man. Communication in Society, vol. 2 (book).” Social Forces, vol. 68, no. 3, Mar. 1990, pp. 938-940. EBSCOhost
- Milton C. Albrecht. “The Relationship of Literature and Society.” American Journal of Sociology, no. 5 (Mar, 1954): 425-436
- Nostrand, Howard Lee. “Literaature in the Describing of a Literate Culture.” The French Review, vol. 37, no. 2, 1963, pp. 145-157. JSTOR, JSTOR.
- O’Flinn, J.P. “Orwell on Literature and Socitey.” College English, vol. 31, no. 6, 1970, pp. 603-612. JSTOR, JSTOR.
- Zetlin, Froma I. “Playing the Other: Greek and Society in Classical Greece Literature.” University of Chicago Press.