Amsterdam, Netherlands

Literature and Society

Bachelor's
Language: EnglishStudies in English
Subject area: humanities
Time study: 3 years
University website: vu.nl/en
Literature
Literature, most generically, is any body of written works. More restrictively, literature writing is considered to be an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage.
Society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same geographical or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often evinces stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups.
Society
The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.
James Russell Lowell, Don Quixote. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 724–25.
Literature
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is—to teach; the function of the second is—to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.
Thomas De Quincey, Essays on the Poets, Alexander Pope.
Society
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776).
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