Literature has changed the world

karaokeman

Just read an article which argues poetry and literature have changed the world and helped for revolutions to occur.

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.4/elaine_scarry_poetry_literature_reading_empathy_ethics.php

The three main reasons given were;

1) Invitation to empathy of fictional characters
2) Reliance on deliberate thought
3) Its beauty

Discuss.

ThirdMan

karaokeman wrote: »

Discuss.

Russian literature would be an interesting place to start, in terms of literature giving birth to revolutions.

I'm not an expert in this area, but I know a little about Dostoyevsky, and one of the questions often asked of his works is how much they influenced later political movements.

However, in his biography of Dostoyevsky, Joseph Frank sort of argues the opposite, that the major works are actually responses to existing ideologies or radicals.

But I'd say it's probably a little bit of both. It's hard to imagine a novel like Demons not being spoken about by early student revolutionaries, etc.