What is Literature And How Is It Related To Life.

From my point of view, Literature is the artistic expression of thought, which is replete with feelings and imagination. It is expressed in such an untechnical form as to make it intelligible and give aesthetic pleasure and relief to the mind. 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 and interprets with charm of language, the experiences, and spiritual intuitions of man. Whenever thought is embodied in forms that appeal to our ideals, sensibilities, and tastes rather than in a form that appears merely or mainly to the speculative reason or the logical faculty, Literature may be said to exist. Truly did Lowers Dickenson says,"... To understand the expression of all that is lovely in nature, of all that is poignant and sensitive to man, is to us in itself a sufficient end" A rose in a moonlit garden, the shadow of trees on the turf, the wine cup, and guitar, the pathos of life and death, the moment that hand stretched out in vain, the moment that glides away forever, the hush of the hunted past, all that we have, all that eludes us -- to all these things, we response and the response is what we called Literature.

Literature is one of the instruments for giving us characters armed with reason, clothed by courage and inspired by that thought, spirit, and virtue of which it has been said are the brightest ornaments of the mind of man.

A student of Literature is one, who through books, explores the strange voyages of man's moral reason, the impulses of the human heart, the changes that have overtaken human ideals of virtue and happiness, and the shifting fortunes of great conceptions of truth and virtue.

Judging from the above discussion, I can safely say that Literature has three 'distinctive qualities'--artistic quality, A quality that might bring readers a favor. But the fact is a hundred men may pass a hayfield and see only dead grass but need I mentioned the one who pauses by the field, looks deeper, see truth and beauty where we see only dead grass, and writes a few lines where the hay tells its own story.

"Yesterday's flowers am I

And I have drunk my last sweet draught of dew........

The sun looks down and sees me in my shroud

The shroud of my last dew."

One who reads the first exquisite line can never again see hay without recalling the beauty hidden from his eyes until the poet found it. Suggestiveness appeals to our emotions and imagination rather than our intellect, followed by permanence. The world does not live by bread alone, and despite its apparent absorption in material things, it does not willingly allow any beautiful thing to perish. Literature is like a river in the flood which gradually purifies itself in two ways- the mud settles to the bottom. The scum rises to the top when we read the writing; the clear stream is purified of its dross-from which we find two more qualities, which we call the test of Literature and which determines its permanence.

Thus the distinct forms of Literature are interfused and interpenetrated with man's sociality because basically, all Literature springs from life from which they emanate. Though an imitation of life, Literature is by no means less vital and interesting than real life. What the literary artist creates by his imagination does not operate in a vacuum but on the phenomenal reality of perception, deep human passion, and imaginative reality, embodied in symbols and images which are far more real than any sensuous reality of the objective world. Shakespeare, by his imagination, achieved for his Hamlet an intensity of life, unsurpassed by any human character of our perceptible world; of Keats who standing in the chamber of Death feels keen that no poet can approach the shrine of MUSE if he does not possess imagination. None can usurp this height. But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery and will not let them rest. So, Pan's pipe must be perfect through intense suffering to be transformed into Apollo's lute.

When we read such Literature, we rise above the sickening atmosphere of the selfish world we live in, and our "cabined, cribbed and confined" self breathes a larger air; our personality is released. This is the condition of mind when it "shines, full alchemized and free of space," and this makes us intensely conscious of the largeness of our self (which remains callous and irresponsive in everyday life ) that gives us pure artistic delight.

To conclude then, I write, " A great book is the precious lifeblood of the master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." And the art of Literature is the nearest thing to life; it has an uplifting power all of its own that carries us beyond the bounds of the meager humanity of our everyday round of existence-our work a day world of petty struggles. It is man's greatest achievement, the treasury of his creative power that merges in life.

In its ultimate analysis, a great literary work is born from the heart and heard of putting life's message into it.

some of them are :

John Keats -'Endymion'
Shakespeare - 'Macbeth'

To know more about Literature view:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature.