The functions of literature I began this chapter by noting that literary theory in the 1980s and 1990s has not focused on the difference between literary and non- literary works. What theorists have done is to reflect on iiterature as a historical and ideologicai category, on the social and political functions that something called literature has been thought to perform. In nineteenth-century England. literature emerged as an extremely important idea, a special kind of writing charged with several functions. Made a subject of instruction in the colonies of the British Empire, it was
charged with giving the natives an appreciation of the greatness of England and engaging them as grateful participants in a historic civilizing enterprise. At home it would counter the selfishness and materialism fostered by the new capitalist economy, offering the middle classes and the aristocrats alternative values and giving the workers a stake in the culture that. materially, relegated them to a subordinate position. It would at once teach disinterested appreciation. provide a sense of national greatness, create fellow-feeling among the classes, and ultimately, function as a replacement for religion. which seemed no longer to be able to hold society together. Any set of texts that could do all that would be very special indeed. What is literature that it was thought to do all this? One thing that is crucial is a special structure of exemplarity at work in literature. A literary work Hamlet, for instance is characteristically the story of fictional character: it presents itself as in some way exemplary(why else would you read it?). but it simultaneously declines to define the range or scope of that exemplar -hence the ease with which readers and critics come to speak about the universality of literature. The structure of literary works is such that it is easier to take them as telling us about'the human condition in general than to specify what narrower categories they describe or illuminate. Is Hamlet just about princes. or men of the Renaissance. or introspective young men, or people whose fathers have died in obscure circumstances? Since all such answers seem unsatisfactory, it is easier for readers not to answer, thus implicitly accepting a possibility of universality. In their particularity, novels, poems, and plays decline to explore what they are exemplary of at the same time that they invite all readers to become involved in the predicaments and thoughts of their narrators and characters.
หน้าที่ของวรรณกรรมเริ่มบทนี้ โดยสังเกตว่า ทฤษฎีวรรณกรรมในแถบเอเชียได้ไม่เน้นความแตกต่าง ระหว่างวรรณกรรม และไม่-วรรณกรรมทำงาน สิ่งที่ theorists ได้ทำคือการ สะท้อนว่า สิ่งที่เรียกว่าวรรณกรรมมีการคิดทำใน iiterature เป็นการประวัติศาสตร์และประเภท ideologicai ในหน้าที่สังคม และการเมือง ในอังกฤษศตวรรษที่ปั้นจั่น วรรณคดีเกิดเป็นความคิดสำคัญมาก พิเศษชนิดเขียนคิด มีหลายฟังก์ชัน ทำเรื่องคำสั่งในอาณานิคมของจักรวรรดิอังกฤษ คำcharged with giving the natives an appreciation of the greatness of England and engaging them as grateful participants in a historic civilizing enterprise. At home it would counter the selfishness and materialism fostered by the new capitalist economy, offering the middle classes and the aristocrats alternative values and giving the workers a stake in the culture that. materially, relegated them to a subordinate position. It would at once teach disinterested appreciation. provide a sense of national greatness, create fellow-feeling among the classes, and ultimately, function as a replacement for religion. which seemed no longer to be able to hold society together. Any set of texts that could do all that would be very special indeed. What is literature that it was thought to do all this? One thing that is crucial is a special structure of exemplarity at work in literature. A literary work Hamlet, for instance is characteristically the story of fictional character: it presents itself as in some way exemplary(why else would you read it?). but it simultaneously declines to define the range or scope of that exemplar -hence the ease with which readers and critics come to speak about the universality of literature. The structure of literary works is such that it is easier to take them as telling us about'the human condition in general than to specify what narrower categories they describe or illuminate. Is Hamlet just about princes. or men of the Renaissance. or introspective young men, or people whose fathers have died in obscure circumstances? Since all such answers seem unsatisfactory, it is easier for readers not to answer, thus implicitly accepting a possibility of universality. In their particularity, novels, poems, and plays decline to explore what they are exemplary of at the same time that they invite all readers to become involved in the predicaments and thoughts of their narrators and characters.
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