Literature is one of the most important integral constituents of national originality of every nation. When we start to learn about any country we first of all pay our attention to history, culture, language, and, of course, literature of it. Actually getting to know literature of the country will be already enough to get to know a little bit about the history of the country, because literature is very often based on historical events; literature is a good source to get to know about nation’s culture, it’s traditions and customs, because literature is always expressed in the light of culture; obviously we’ll get to know about the language just reading any literary work written in that language. Of course literature is not history which only describes the course of events; literature giving us some historical facts also provides us with different opinions on historical events expressed by famous writers. The way in which this or that piece of literature was written is determined by different factors such as culture, historical period during which it was written, gender of the author and class to which he or she belonged, her or his ethnicity and others. So, knowing all that I’ll try to estimate the influence of different factors on literature, on the way in which it’s written and discussed.


Culture is a key-point which determines in which style a literary work is written. For example, if we try to compare American and British literature we’ll surely notice that the differences between them are caused pretty much by differences in cultures. Languages in this case are not the source of difference because American English and British English are two similar dialects of the same language. The style in which literary works can be written is determined very much cultural traditions and customs. In the USA due to its multinational structure of population literary style is more varied than it is in British literature. Though nowadays there are so many literary movements existing that combine all sorts of styles and thus constantly create new styles in literature.

The next point that I’d like to emphasize is the role of gender of an author. To do that, I’d like to speak about famous British novelist of 18-19th centuries Jane Austen. Everybody knows her famous “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”, “Emma” and other works. Being a woman Jane Austen always described difficulties met by young ladies during their lifetime. Usually those difficulties were associated with problems to find a good man and how to successfully get married with him. Very often young ladies in the books by Jane Austen had to put up with inequality, because usually the author’s main characters were from middle class. That’s why they all had to struggle against the stereotypes developed at that period of time that people from middle class were ignorant and ill-mannered. Of course it wasn’t so and all young ladies from Austen’s novels managed to get married very successfully. Her books are also filled with a lot of satire toward higher classes of society and religious leaders. By the way, Jane Austen never got a chance to get married herself. To make a conclusion on this point I’d like to say that I’ve never heard about any male author who’d write so much about relationship between men and women and end their novel with a wedding. This is a special feature of literary works written by female writers. Male authors prefer to write about historical events, brave heroes and heroines, describe wars and invasions, people’s sufferings and people’s struggle against insuperable life difficulties (the latter will be overcome anyway by the end of the book).

Speaking about the effect of historical period during which literary work is written I must say that it influences tremendously the style in which literature is written and the context of it. Let’s imagine that Jane Austen lives nowadays and writes her novels. If it was so, she would have never described her main characters in the way she did in her works. She would describe them as independent and strong women that would like to take a confident stand in life, make a lot of money and of course get married (notice, getting married is not the first one among her goals). Such changes in context are caused by changes in society and psychology of women, because now we live in absolutely different historical period than 18-19th centuries.

Class and ethnicity to which writers belong also determine a lot of things in his or her books. Usually authors describe class to which they belong themselves. If they belong to middle class they’ll for sure describe hardships of people’s life and relationship with upper classes. Authors from upper classes usually describe relationship between people of the same class, not paying attention to lower classes.

Obviously ethnicity, class, gender, historical period are not the only factors that influence literature, among other factors I should name age of writer, which shows personal growth of writer, political situation in the country, religious beliefs and others. But no matter under what influence a literary work is written it is always a cry from the heart of a writer, a perfect expression of his thoughts and personal opinion.

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