HOW THE FEATURES AND
CONCERNS OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LITERATURE DIFFER
The world literature sequence is taught in
two halves. The first half, English 251, covers literature written anywhere in
the world up through about the 16th century, the beginning of the
European Enlightenment. The second half, English 252, covers literature written
anywhere in the world from the 16th century to the present day. This
literature is called "modern literature," and its chief
characteristic is something called "modernity," a term we'll need to
understand. The concerns of modernity differ from those of ancient and medieval
times because the assumptions modern people make about themselves and the world
differ in important ways from the assumptions people made during earlier times.
What are some of the fundamental differences
between ancient & modern life? Let's look at a few social measures.
How society is organized: Ancient society consists of a strict social
heirarchy organized around a king or queen. The ladder includes inferior nobels
and, at the bottom of the social scale, commoners. Social status, marital
partners, and occupations are chosen by or inherited from parents, and
therefore determined for most people at birth. There's relatively little social
mobility. Kings may be overthrown from time to time because high-ranking rivals
compete for positions of leadership, and some of these rivals may be supported
by minor nobels or even by commoners. But commoners don't initiate these
battles, and are usually not a significant force determining the outcome.
Modern society consists of loosely organized
social classes headed by continually changing elected leaders. In theory these
leaders are chosen by the commoners they govern, usually through a tabulated
election. Social status is dependent on wealth, which is the reward for
achievement valued by others. Therefore social status, marital partners, and
occupations for most people are not determined at birth. The transition to this
period was completed by the first two permanent rebellions of commoners against
durable monarchies. These rebellions, occurring near the close of the 18th
century in Europe and America, were the American and French Revolutions.
The rights and responsibilities of
individuals: In ancient society,
people of low birth have few or no rights. What's more, they aren't concerned
very much with their rights. They're concerned with their responsibilities to
their immediate relatives, their communities, their overlords, and their kings.
An individual's happiness is unimportant; what matters is his duty to others.
He does what work he's told to do. He marries whom he's told to marry. He lives
where he's told to live. He also believes what he's told to believe and wants
what he's told to want.
Common beliefs and values, together with
assigned social roles, help to maintain social order, stability, and security.
In modern society, people have "the
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." International
organizations exist to challenge rulers who abbrogate these rights. While many
people in today's world are not really free, they're ruled by autocrats who
claim to rule in the common man's best interest. (Kings didn't need to voice
concern about their subjects' best interests; they were responsible for the
military security of the realm and little else.) The notion that individuals
have the right to pursue their own happiness any way they can has brought a lot
of happiness to some people. But it has brought trauma to others and has also
profoundly disrupted social order, stability, and security. For example,
marriages and nuclear families were once permanent units broken only by death.
Now they're easily dissolved, often without continuing responsibility for
children. People once took pride in quality products or services rendered by
their families for generations. Now many people take pride only in the number
of hours they work and the number of dollars they make doing anything that
generates more money. People once respected the law simply because it was the
law; that is, they recognized the law as something that protects us. Also, they
probably felt some embarrassment at the thought of cheating their neighbors.
Now the fairness or effectiveness of laws is much more frequently and easily
questioned. Now petty crime and such "non-criminal" crimes as income
tax fraud are rampant. There are fewer social inhibitions against stealing and
lying, either in public or private life. And many more of those who are poor or
otherwise "disenfranchised" see violence and even murder as
legitimate tools they can use to "pursue their happiness." In
general, fewer people--rich or poor--feel responsible for the happiness of anyone
other than themselves.
Material well-being: In ancient society, wealth and natural resources are
used by the nobility to maintain their power and to insulate themselves from
such misfortunes as famine and plague. In addition, the authority of kings is
bolstered by the role of religious traditions that discourage such threatening
enterprises as science and technology. (Technology can't develop without
science, and science can't develop in an intellectual climate that forbids
questioning the description of the world in an ancient religious text like,
say, the Bible.) Also, it's not in the best interest of kings or ancient
churches to encourage trade (free or otherwise) or to encourage acceptance of
cultural diversity. Trade is threatening for more than one reason. Not only
does it introduce new ideas and new wants, but it also creates a new social
class, the merchant class, which begins to accrue a lot of wealth and power.
Modern society is a world of merchants,
bankers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, and technicians. All of these new
occupations have arisen in a different kind of society that requires them to
meet the needs and wants of individuals pursuing their own rights and
happiness. Each one of these occupations tells us a lot about the well-being of
the modern citizen of an industrial society. We need merchants because lots of
people have a fair amount of money to spend in pursuit of novelty,
entertainment, and self-improvement. We need bankers to keep track of this
money and organize it so that money itself can make more money (something that
only happens in the modern world). We need lawyers because a whole society of
individuals aggressively pursuing their own happiness are bound to come in
conflict with one another. Increasingly complicated laws are necessary to
control this conflict. The laws have grown so complex that only those who study
them as a life's work understand them. We need doctors because medical care is
no longer a need to be pursued only when absolutely necessary. Rather it's a luxury
service to be purchased at will whenever it might improve the quality of
someone's life. We need scientists to continually discover new ways to
eliminate discomfort and unhappiness. And we need technicians to go beyond
reducing discomfort; to increase the ease and covenience of every aspect of our
individual lives.
Spiritual and psychological well-being: Ancient society is a highly ordered world. While it
affords little freedom, it does afford certain psychological comforts. Just as
ancient man doesn't question the authority of his king, he also doesn't
question the authority of his God or gods. He doesn't question the prevailing
wisdom about the purpose of a human life, or man's place in nature. He has
fixed codes by which he can measure his worth as a man. He knows whether he's
highly regarded or not, and he knows why. His life may be harder and shorter
than modern man's. But if he endures these hardships without complaint, he may
earn for himself a deep sense of satisfaction. He has the secure knowledge that
he lived his life as his God, his friends, and his loved ones require. No one
will question the worth of his life, precisely because he devoted it to the
fulfillment of duty rather than to the pursuit of his own happiness.
Modern man pursues his own material
happiness and physical well-being with much greater success than his ancestors
did. But this often happens at the expense of his psychological and spiritual
well-being, which is dependent on set beliefs that have now been discarded.
Spiritual and psychological well-being is also dependent on deep ties of trust
and love to other human beings--to as many other human beings as possible, in
fact. But modern man lives a life of isolation from and competition with others
rather than a life of strong community ties. Business contacts have replaced
friends; significant others have replaced life-long spouses; power lunches have
replaced tribal and religious ceremonies; microwave meals have replaced
communal kitchens of women relatives; daycare centers have replaced extended
families living in one home.
***
It isn't surprising to discover that changed lives have produced changed assumptions and beliefs about what life should be. And these changes have produced important changes in the literature that reflects both. Consider a contrast between modern and ancient man, offered years ago in class by a former student.:
Ancient man believed that men as a species
were powerless and puny compared to the gods. By contrast, modern men are as powerful as
the ancient gods. Modern men have split the atom and built bombs that could
destroy the entire planet. We've torn and started to repair holes in the
planet's atmosphere. We've just cracked the human genetic
code, and have also discovered not only how to clone ourselves if we want to do
so, but how to change our genetic heritage and design ourselves as a species.
We'll soon be travelling to other planets, and within a hundred years maybe to
the stars. HOWEVER…individual human lives have never
been cheaper than they were in the 20th century. We waged a war
that killed close to a hundred million people and built bombs that leveled
entire cities in an instant. In the world's richest country, children now kill
children for gold chains, jackets, and sneakers. Dictators kill millions for no
reason at all. (Cambodia's Pol Pot killed anyone who wore glasses.)
Our discussion has now arrived at the chief
irony of modern life. We can now state the main problem of modernity, even if
we still aren't sure we know what modernity is. The modern world is the only
world in which ordinary individuals have ever assumed they all had the right to
pursue their own happiness. But there's a catch. This pursuit has robbed modern
man of his sense of identity, purpose, security, worth, and place.
I don't mean to suggest that we should go
back to the "good old days" of mass poverty, ignorance, famine, and
disease. Here's what I do want to suggest. It's important to understand the
messages conveyed by literature of different time periods--messages about
social and psychological change.
251 students should be prepared to discover
that ancient literature can convey certain human experiences modern literature
can't, or at least not in such a moving way. They should learn to recognize the
value of these lost feelings and experiences. To some extent, they should try
to reclaim in their own lives some of the spirituality modern man has lost.
On the other hand, 252 students should be
aware that every writer they read will question these social changes. Have they
done more harm than good? Many writers think so, and their works tell you why.
In fact, their works were written mainly with that purpose in mind.
Take a look at the chart below. It explores some of the main contrasts between ancient and modern literature in terms of the type of character who serves as a hero, the tone or mood of the writing, the writer's expectations of society, and his sense of whether life makes sense.
| Ancient World | 18th/19th Century | 20th/21st Century |
|
Hero is a model of the ideal human type. Must be noble. |
Hero is a common man, like Flaubert's pharmacist or Tolstoy's bureaucrats. |
Hero is often a pitiful victim or a mental patient. |
|
Hero is tragic. His downfall is due to his own internal character flaws. He arouses terror and pity because such a great man has such a big fall. |
Hero is partly tragic and partly pathetic. Like Ivan Ilyich, he is partly responsible for what happens to him, but the deck is also stacked against him by his society. |
Hero is clearly pathetic. He's a victim of circumstances completely beyond his control. Often he's particularly pitiful, like Gregor Samsa in Kafka's "Metamorphosis." |
|
Society is never criticized. For example, warfare is a source of great tragedy in the ILIAD, but it wouldn't occur to Homer that a world without war could exist. |
Society's flaws are no longer taken for granted. Writers point out what's wrong with society and think man should try to improve society. |
Society is insane, absurd, pointless, as in all the stories of Kafka. |
|
Life basically makes sense. You make mistakes, but can learn from these mistakes, or your tragedy is a lesson for others. |
Works of literature begin to question whether or not life makes sense. Does the Barrelmaker's marriage make sense? Does Ivan Ilyich's career make sense? How can we understand it? |
Society clearly makes no sense. This is always the case with Kafka. Does it make sense that a man could go on trial without knowing what he did wrong and still somehow be guilty? |
Return to English 251 syllabus.