The document discusses various methods for studying literature, including studying the author, systematized reading, the chronological method, comparative study, and the historical method. It emphasizes understanding the author's life and times, reading works in the order they were produced, comparing authors and genres, and considering the historical context and influences between literary periods and nations. The comparative method is highlighted as particularly important for grasping influences like those between English and French literature from the 17th to 18th centuries.

1. Methods of studying
Literature
Presented by: Sadia Ishfaq
Lecturer Department of Linguistics and Communications (DLC)
University of Management and Technology (UMT)

2. Objectives of the webinar
• What is literature? Relationship of literature to life
• Methods of studying Literature
 The study of the author
 Systematized reading
Chronological method of study
Comparative study of Literature
Historical method

3. What is Literature?
• Literature is composed of those books, and of those books only which
in the first place, by reason of their subject-matter and their mode of
treating it, are of general human interest; and in which, in the second
place, the element of form and the pleasure which form gives are to
be regarded as essential ( Hudson, 1963)
• Literature is an expression of life through the medium of language . It
is a vital record of what men have seen and experienced in life, it is
about the experiences and effects of those aspects of life on human-
beings which have lasting effects on all of us.

4. Literature and Author
• According to Matthew Arnold, “ Literature is a criticism of life’’ ( as
cited in Hudson, 1964
• The French saying says, ‘Art is life seen through a temperament , for
the mirror which the artist holds up to the world about him is the
mirror of his own personality
• A great book originates out of the brain and heart of the author, he
has put himself into its pages; and are instinct with his personality
• A great book is interpreted in the light of author’s personality, his
associations, ideologies, beliefs, the movements he was involved in
take part in his writings

5. • Develop personal intercourse with the author and ourselves( pg,7, 10)
• Make reading a method of close and sympathetic companionship
• We know the man ( author) through what he has written and his
writings represent his individuality
• Milton says, ‘ a great book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit,
embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life’
• The secret of profitable reading is to permit the life-blood of the
master-spirit to enter into our veins, is the preliminary step in the
literary culture (Hudson, 8)

6. Use of author’s biography
• The study of personal life of author can be achieved by the use of author’s
biography
• We need to know the major facts of his outward history i.e. his ambitions,
struggles, successes, failures , intellectual habits ,methods of work– and
how his outward history is manifested in these books
• What we need to know about Shakespeare’s biography?
- Shakespeare as an actor, poet, dramatist
- As a manager
- Playwright- frequenter of Mermaid Tavern
- Citizen of Stratford
- The author’s biography is of great importance in study of Dante whose
writings cannot be understood once detached from his life

7. Writer as the representative of his age
• The study of the literature is the study of history of English literature
• A great writer is not an isolated fact, he has his affiliations with the
present and past, contemporaries, predecessors and thus possess
national spirit ( pg 26)
• In the historical study of literature two aspects are significant, the
notion of ‘continuous life’ or ‘national spirit’ in it and it exhibits the
changing spirit of successive ages
• A nation’s literature is not a miscellaneous collection of books which
happen to have been written in mother tongue rather it is ‘
progressive revelation, age by age, of such nation’s mind and
character. ( pg, 27)

8. Writer’s familiarity with the age
• An individual writer may differ from the national type, but his genius
will still represent characteristic spirit of his race, that is common to
writers of his age
• Professor Barrett Wendell said, ‘Literature gives us the power of
travelling in time. We become familiar not only with minds of other
races, but with the minds of other epochs as well’ ( as cited in An
Introduction to the Study of Literature, 28, 1963)

9. Writer as the representative of his age
• According to Goethe’s dictum, ‘every writer is the citizen of his age as
well as of his country, and Renan puts it, ‘ one belongs to one’s
century and race even when one reacts against one’s century and
race’
• Behind every book that is written lies the personality of the man who
wrote it and behind every national literature is the character of the
race which produced it. ( pg, 33)
• Literature is one of the many forces in which the energy of the age
discharges itself, in its ‘political movements, religious thought,
philosophical speculation and art’ ( Hudson, 1963)

10. Systematized reading
• Introduce method to reading
• Systematized reading
• Texts to be regarded as ‘ corpus’ – an organic whole
• Most profitable plans of study is the chronological method i.e. to read
the works of an author the order in which they were produced.
• For instance chronological study of writers is of immense importance
in case of Shakespeare and Balzac

11. English literature as study of English history
• The study of English Literature takes us to the wide field of English history,
which means the history of English politics and society , manners and
customs, culture and learning, and philosophy and religion
• When analyzing literature not only the contemporary state of the society
has to be analyzed, but the contemporaneous movements and cross-
currents in life and thought are to be kept under consideration such as
literature of the Victorian Era is in accordance with the emerging trends of
that time ( Hudson, year, p.34).
• The Victorian literature reflects the thoughts ,aspirations, ideals, doubts,
struggles, faith and hope of great and turbulent period of history

12. Chronological Study
• The chronological study of the texts provides luminous record of
author’s inner life, we get to follow the various phases of his
experience, the stages of his mental and moral growth, the changes
undergone by his art ( Hudson,)
• The chronological study of the texts allow the reader to grasp the
‘substantial sense of those works as a progressive revelation of his
genius and power’
• In chronological study, the writer has to be compared and contrast
with himself and his contemporaries

13. The comparative method of study

14. The comparative method
• Tennyson and browning can be read side by side
• The comparative study of Sophocles and Euripides can be carried out
• The doctrine that ‘all higher knowledge is gained by comparison, and
rests on comparison is true in the study of literature as in the study of
science’ ( Hudson, pg 15)
• Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet can be compared with other tragedies
such as Macbeth, Othello and King Lear
• To understand materialism in Marlow’s plays it can be compared with
his other tragedies such as Doctor Faustus, Jew of Malta, Edward II
and Tamburlaine

15. Comparative Method

16. The comparative method in the historical
study of literature
• The comparative method is of significant importance when we are
dealing with literature historically
• In the study of literature there is a profound influence exerted by the
genius of one race upon the other
• For instance, after the middle seventeenth century political and other
circumstances combined caused the English genius under the
influence of genius of France that led to the period of French
influence ( pg 43)
• ‘ The literature of France was to England what Aaron was to Moses-
an expositor of great truths’ ( Macaulav, Essay on Walpole)

17. • English literature of later seventeenth and earlier eighteenth century
contains constant reference to the literature of France
• During the times of Voltaire and Rousseau ( French writers) the
influence in terms of religion, philosophy, society, politics and in
forms of literature was in reverse direction i.e. from England to France
– the period of Anglomania had begun ( 44)
• French mind was engrossing English ideas on many subjects such as
religion, beliefs, the social order, politics and forms of literature
• Voltaire’s three years of exile in England are described by Condorcet
as of European importance ( 44)

18. • During the period of Anglomania, French writers of the period
preceding the revolution exhibit intense indebtedness to England
• Hettner said that, ‘English Literature is the starting point of the whole
European movement of Enlightenment in the 18th century and to the
literature to which this movement gave birth’ ( as cited in Hudson,
year)
• It was through their French interpreters that English ideas became
European and effective and spread of revolutionary ideas & spirit
took place through the English writers

19. Influence of genius of one nation upon
another
• To interpret the literatures of France and England from middle 17th
century till the end of 18th century we find an influence by one
national genius upon the other
• To understand the literature of England and France it is imperative
that they should be studied together

20. Summary

21. References