Introduction: 

Literature is the artistic expression of profound thoughts, which is replete with spontaneous and intense passions, imaginative ideas and reflective viewpoints of the literary men. It is exposed in such an untechnical form as to make it more comprehensible, giving aesthetic pleasure and relief to the mind of the common man. According to Lord Morely, “Literature consists of all the books where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity and attraction of form” . In other words, literature heightens our awareness of human life. It enhances our vision of life and we begin to look at nature with new eyes. It interprets with ornamental language the experiences and spiritual intuitions of man. Literature appeals us greatly due to its essential features including thought, feeling, imagination and beauty of style and form etc.

As Lowes Dickinson states implications of literature in this way: “To feel, and in order to express, or at least to understand the expressions of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlight garden, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond blossom, scene of pine, the wine cup and guitar, these and the pathos of life and death, the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides for ever away into the shadow and hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume escaped on the gale—-to all these things we are trained to respond, and the response is what we call literature.” Literature is “mirror of life” an influential tool to weigh and to consider. Literature is such catalytic mechanism to inspire our thoughtful feelings and imagination. Literature is one of the instruments, and one of the most powerful instruments, for forming character, for giving us, character armed with reason, braced by knowledge, clothed with strong determination, courage and fortitude, and inspired by that public spirit and public virtue of which it has been well said that they are the brightest ornaments of the mind of man.

In the words of Philip J. Waller , “ The literary student explores the strange voyages of man’s moral reason, the impulses of the human heart, the chances and changes that have overtaken human ideals of virtue and happiness, of conduct and manners, and the shifting fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue.” All literary men like poets, dramatists, satirists, fiction writers, novelists, humorists, maxim writers, political orators, character writers and great preachers teach us how to know man and how to delve deep into the human nature.

To quote Emerson : “Literature is a record of the best thoughts.” Literature is the embodiment of written thoughts and feelings of intellectual men and women, expressed in such fantastic pleasurable style for the readers. The main objective of the student of literature is to discover the best which has been thought in the world. The aim of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written but according to Cardinal Newman , the function of literature is to educate the individuals, to broaden and refine vision, to correct follies and foibles of ordinary men, to improve comprehensible powers, to enhance knowledge and wisdom of the readers. The main object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibilities, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression.

To quote Emerson : “Literature is a record of the best thoughts.” Literature is the embodiment of written thoughts and feelings of intellectual men and women, expressed in such fantastic pleasurable style for the readers. The main objective of the student of literature is to discover the best which has been thought in the world. The aim of reading is not to dip into everything that even wise men have ever written but according to Cardinal Newman , the function of literature is to educate the individuals, to broaden and refine vision, to correct follies and foibles of ordinary men, to improve comprehensible powers, to enhance knowledge and wisdom of the readers. The main object of literature in education is to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it power over its own faculties, application, flexibilities, method, critical exactness, sagacity, address, and expression

These are the objects of that intellectual perfection which a literary education is destined to give. The earnest student of literature is like a sailor who sails into new seas of thought. He tries to understand the human heart, its shifting virtues and vices, its sorrows and joys. The value of poets, dramatists, humorists, satirists, novelists lies only in the revelation that they make of the human heart. It is in this sense that literature is called one of the humanities, a training of moral sensibilities and imagination.