are english and literature the same thing

are english and literature the same thing

The Distinction Between English and Literature

1. Definition of English

The correlation between English language and English literature traces dimly like time expires, but it can in some cases already be clearly perceived now. The breath of self-fulfilling interest by historical actors striving to place their own place as selected folk saving culture gives to literature a theoretical measure of quality, deeming it automatically devoted the differing paper back out of sixteen. Second on the opposite spectrum, the distinction made is generally between the intellectual and what is not such. Under this approach, blue clothes include living room, literature, music, fashion, and cooking. Standard rooms include Beowulf, West Casket, music, fashion, and not. Career distinctions are common and vary from examining spoken discourses in excellent writing systems or standard vocabulary provision in an efficiency-oriented planning cycle to studying in-vivo language use, sequences of putting, and, of course, the literary vehicle. Given it almost always has objective, English literature can virtually be studied by everyone.

English is essentially the study of, or a study of the ways to use language, particularly in the form which is spoken in England. It is also known as modern literature, in contrast to the study of which is as good as fluent. Its tone might permit ambiguity in whether what is written should be understood as literature in English. There seems to be a lot of substance in this idea of two domains, even in Britain. Thus, in practical terms, which is mainly a means of establishing or the benchmark of certain, almost certain truth, the institute’s validation is derived from the study of its policies and actions, that what are the real underway fact and good state of English is modern, and little else. This English literature belongs in the curriculum with the English system.

2. Definition of Literature

It is rather surprising that literature is so difficult to define, that a whole realm of human experience can be so resistant to conceptualization. Fortunately, most of us are able to cope with it quite easily in its undifferentiated form, as long as we do not attempt to express what it is we are coping with. We can deal effectively with the “confidential” question: what are you guys doing exactly as members of the English Department? For everyone seems to have a fairly simple, quite straightforward idea of literature, and it still is the case in advanced countries that it is to this department that we come for the professional treatment chiefly of literature. However, when the conversation is to include other people, we become conscious of the experience of talking at cross-purposes. The difficulty can, in part, be explained by the paradoxical nature of literature, truth and deception interfering with one another more than in any other medium of direct communication. The trouble with counseling literature, however, is that this same complex of dissimulant and explicit propositions is, when understood in another way as well, inside it. Being an art form, literature starts from precepts: the final author writes that people must desist from asking for things not tenable, and then the disorder begins. But readers’ general questions and their subsequent development of the poem or story would appear to be responses, or orders. Such is implicature, such is the fictional world which literature shares with the makers, users of language. And as, just like them, literature is a social act, it is hardly surprising that some ideal of order can be perceived. People are, moreover, invited to participate in this communication not so much by the artifact itself as by a written gloss grammatical comment. There are moreover many advantages to such relatively uncontrived means of communicating with literature-hungry trendsetters. First of all, generality is avoided without having to resort to a style that is private, subjective because of its particular reference or orientation. By alluding to the permitting machinery in familiar contexts and tables, we are able to externalize the statement, to hide the intimate and specific communication.

3. Differences Between English and Literature

So, while an awareness of literature is thought to lead to personal, affective growth through a relation of reader to text, exhibitions, plays, television documentaries and auralité films, the majority of these investigative activities is perceived as not being English. Only literature is English, even though literature is a little bit more than English; it is unwise to be perceived as merely English: the fact appears to be that while ‘English’ is a box-ticking, timeless subject, literature, to some, offers only teaching of the one authentic genre, regardless of the material used to tell stories or to develop awareness of the varied nature of conversation in English-speaking cultures and beyond.

But English is a subject, not a wider Arts rubric, and at secondary level, it has been characterized by its limitations and instrumental function. English, though universally popular, is also test-driven, seen to be too often at the behest of others; students need to read, they need to develop broad-based cultural appreciation of life in all its richness, and indeed they need to know about language and its functions within our world. English does provide the predictable ’employability’ skills in essays and speaking and listening, and the subject is characterized by its search for its own reverence amid the many minor subjects that to some, we have become: media studies, film studies, communication studies are generally located towards the bottom of the hierarchy: teaching media around a television or computer screen suggests that these activities are both accessible and somehow ‘less than’ extra-curricular pursuits. Writing media or film studies, presentation and the completely unpredictable level of student engagement guaranteed when imagination is fed through play, along with the application of skills developed in other literary areas, renders the subjects inferior to those cloaked in the sanctified mantle of English. The awe associated with valuable poetry is to some, associated almost entirely with ‘English’. Lots of other subjects really explore the literary and drama can never be seen as a uniquely literary activity.

The tensions I have described above concerning the distinction between English and literature make the concept of the discipline of English problematic. However, the context is not entirely negative. Indeed, its complexity is an index of the seriousness with which some of the practitioners in the field would like the discipline to be understood. Many in the world of education see English as a generally benefit-driven subject with subjects or disciplines lodged within it, presented as inherently more worthy of study: literature deservedly resides at the heart of English studies because reading, analyzing and evaluating these complex, challenging and multi-culturally appropriate texts, many feel, constitute essential skills and encourage character development. It is these features of literary study that are perceived as both attractive and important: so at their best, literature teachers are reading teachers. The Arts are traditionally seen as a means of understanding the human condition, while drama and the other Arts associated with Thespis share with English curiosity about, and the potential to expose, human (and, indeed, other non-human) motives and consequences. Drama and the Arts contribute to literary studies, but then literature itself is seen as a part of the development of the mind, the nurturing of an aesthetic for visual and auditory perfections of form and volition. Noble stuff indeed, indicative of self-expression at its most complex and elusive. Literature is seen to touch the soul.

4. Importance of Studying English and Literature

The study of literature draws upon a wide range of extrinsic disciplines interrelated in different approaches to analysis. However, the ultimate primary interest is the literary work, the component of language and the properties of text and not the bio-bibliographical aspects of the author or the aesthete, whether it is the cultural, social, or educational contexts or the approaches of philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis; history, gender studies; or myth and material studies that are associated, including cognitive linguistics and stylistics that contribute to enrich the interpretations of a text. With the enrichments, a better understanding and interpretation of a text could be established with an exchange of diverse methods and concepts, leading to more profound analysis and explanation of literary creativity with its richness and complexity passed through the interaction between the text and its readers. Similarly, to literary elements that are linguistically oriented to the phonetic, phonology, and morphology on the one hand, and semantics, syntax, and the lexicon of the other, conduction and deviation highlight both contributions of literary and non-literary elements building a model to the expression of creative arts that better represents the human cognitive progress.

It is important to create a distinction between English and literature. Literature cannot be ignored in English studies. One of the reasons the study of English is considered important is that it exposes the students to some of the culture’s most influential and powerful ideas, causing them to think seriously about the deeper questions that a scholar engages: issues of truth, beauty, goodness, justice, happiness, love, and redemption. However, these are not isolated concepts generated individually; they are contained within literary works and therefore we need to study literature to become experts in these interconnected themes. It is no mistake that the National Council of the English language lays more emphasis on literature as a discipline that students must be experienced in and subsystem within the English language major, stressing that students must read literary texts originating from various times, cultures, and historical milieu which will enable them to recognize what makes the texts of importance; understanding the works advocating itself with an intelligent appreciation of literary legacy.

The importance of literature in English studies and the distinction between English and literature

5. Conclusion

That Literature can provide the mood for the exercise of reasonable reflection was emphasized by I. A. Richards in his Practical Criticism, a project of English Literature education that brought to the forefront the student’s interpretation of the literary text, shedding light on her subjective engagement – capable of creating multiple valid interpretations through an intimate process of relations, associations, imaginations, feelings, valuing anonymity so that the personality of the student did not interfere with the activity of the poem. Richards argues in his work that, although the process involved be of the most intimate, the principle of anonymity must lead to an objectivity that transcends chronological, geographical, social and personal contingencies, thereby providing a common and universal dimension to the text. For Richards, Life without Literature, Richards stresses, is a “meddling” life; interactions fix themselves in a restricted, confinable set of minute repetitions.

One can argue that what we consider a discipline is not a matter of the objects transmitted or taught but the paradigm engaging the practitioner. The distinction between technical and reflective fields made in this paper reveals routines as the paradigm imposed on the teacher and the teaching of Literature while challenging the systematic removal of the reflective element from classroom discussions. The embattled teacher will discover new possibilities for the education of singular readers at this point. For, if on the one hand the school’s focus on preparing children for job market suppresses the singularity of human beings’ perspective of the world, denied their perception or reduction to what can be directly transformed into goods in terms of rationality; on the other, reasonable reflection is possible, and according to Miller, learning leads this sublime task.