The Culture in Literature

When you write any kind of story there will be different factors that can influence your writing, one example is the culture. If we search in the dictionary what culture is, it is said that culture is a set of traditions, ideas and knowledge that characterize an ethnical group. There are many things that make each region unique and interesting because every region have their own believes and their own way to see the daily life. In this blog we are going to talk about how the literature is influence by the country’s culture.

The literature between the countries is very different. When we compare the Greek mythology with the Mayan mythology we can see that although they try to explain the same event there will always be certain characteristics that can’t be the same because their tradition and the knowledge they have. Both of them were polytheist but the way they associate their gods and their interaction with the human world is unique and it is part of the culture.

Another example that comes to my mind of how culture influences the literature is the Manga. There are many cultural things that we can see. Most of the Anime has an historical background, Japanese mythology and important values (honor, courage and humanity). We can observe this in Sakura Card Captor. The values are represented in the story because Sakura wants to protect her village and she doesn’t think that she is in real danger (courage, honor and humanity). The Japanese mythology is present in the magical cards because each of them has their own attribute and is personification by a woman or young lady dressed holding an object according to its power, an old or young man dressed or holding an object according to is power or an animal related to the power. Also we can see the mythology in Sakura’s protectors Yue (moon) and Keroberos (Sun), that in the Japanese culture the Sun is the most powerful and the sun has created the humans and in the story Keroberos is the most powerful.

As you can see literature has a lot of culture of the country where it is written. Many cultural things give ideas to the authors like the mythology, traditions and the knowledge they have. It is very interesting to know the different countries by reading. So if you want to know about one culture read a book and investigate their history to get a better idea of the background.