Literary Heritage We’re going to be looking at the idea of literary heritage and how it sometimes helps to know about the times when a text was written.

Literary Heritage To do with literature: texts that are regarded as having long-lasting value Something which belongs to all the people who share a country or a culture Different countries have different literary heritages.

Because these texts are part of a heritage it means they are not modern. They have been written in the past. We need to be aware that times change. When we read older texts we have to understand that the people at the time it was written lived in a world that was very different to ours. What sort of changes do we need to be aware of?

Well, language changes. You already know that the way Shakespeare uses words and constructs sentences is very different to the modern way. However, it is not only when we go very far back in time that the changes occur. Take a word like ‘nice’. Everybody reading this will know what it means and how to use it. Yet, if you are reading a book from a hundred years ago and you came across ‘nice’ it would have a very different meaning: a very fine distinction or being fastidious.

Attitudes can change: People had different attitudes to class. For example in one of Jane Austen’s books we read that the heroine is all alone in the house. In fact, there are several servants but at that time they were not considered as being important enough as counting as the type of people the middle-class heroine could turn to.

People feel differently about the rights of children. For example, Juliet’s father in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ felt perfectly within his rights to arrange when and who his daughter should marry.

Attitudes to gender change. When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth he decided that Lady Macbeth would play a key role in a murder. To prepare herself for this she appeals to evil spirits to ‘unsex’ her. Shakespeare views women as being more compassionate and sensitive than men so he feels it necessary for her to request that these qualities be removed in order for her to carry out the murder and not stop through a feeling of pity for her victim.

Attitudes to race and religion have changed. Writers such as Joseph Conrad have views that we now consider racist but which were commonplace at the time of writing.

Imagine that 100 years from now somebody is studying a book written today. What sort of things might seem quite normal and acceptable for us but strange in 100 years’ time? (For example, 100 years from now people might think it quite incredible that we breed animals for slaughter).

Sometimes writers are aware of the beliefs and prejudices of their times and try to make people reconsider them.

When Jane Austen was writing it was perfectly normal and acceptable for a young woman to marry for security. Romantic love was not an issue worth considering. There were real economic reasons for this attitude. Women needed security. However, in Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen presents a heroine who will not marry just for financial security. She will only marry for love.

So, Austen was being quite bold in challenging the opinions of her day. Having said that, even she only goes so far. In the end the girl finds a man who she loves AND has money. Also, she agrees to curb her ‘wild’ behaviour and be guided by her husband. Not many writers would suggest this today!

Charles Dickens was very concerned about social issues of his times Charles Dickens was very concerned about social issues of his times. He showed in his novels how wrong it was that people could be sent to gaol for debt. He showed how appalling conditions were for the children in many schools.

Thomas Hardy, in Jude ‘The Obscure’, showed how prejudiced universities were against people from working class backgrounds.

James Joyce, in Ulysses, chooses a Jewish man as one of his heroes and gives him some good lines against those spouting anti-Semitic views.

Our culture is rich in fine literature. Plenary Our culture is rich in fine literature. Writers have left us books, plays and poems which continue to entertain us and make us think and reflect upon our life, world and society Knowing about the context which they were written in can help us to appreciate them more.