The Importance of Literature  pt2               1700w

Pride and Prejudice as a romantic novel. In order to make a judgement about a specific detail in a work you have to be able to place that detail within some scheme of significance. It is only relative to the significance you are giving to the detail that you can make a judgement about its effectiveness or value. Its not just something about an image in a poem and how effective it is as an image, it is much more the case that ‘we have this image in the poem but what is it doing in the poem – what significance does it have in relation to the poem?’. It is only relative to this, that we can ask how effective it is or how valuable it is as a detail. The point of specificity which I hinted at earlier, where we often do make judgements is no doubt in recognition of this detail-oriented approach. You can contrast these with general judgements of work such as, “Shakespeare is a great writer” which appears to be a rather boring comment which offers us very little in way of interest. As opposed to “Shakespeare is a great writer because of his clever use of metaphor within his play ‘A Midsummers Night’s Dream’ within which he uses natural phenomena to mock romantic conventions in literature and theatre”. On its own one use of metaphor does not necessarily make Shakespeare a great writer but in combination with numerous slight details it might pave the way towards a global value or judgement. In this way we can see the connection between the specific details and the global judgements we seek to help define a work of literature’s value. They are not as closely related as one might desire, but if you find many flaws in level of detail, it will affect the global judgement of the work itself and you will draw a negative judgement on a global level.

A final consideration on the concept of value is of the difference between something being