AN IMAGE OF SAINTS IN INDIAN ENGLISH NOVELS

Literature, society and culture are closely related. It is in the society and culture that literature is produced in the language which is spoken in that society to reflect it. Literature is a vague term which denotes poetry, drama, and epic, lyric, short story, essay, prose etc. It is the term carrying with it “qualitative connotations which imply that the work in question has superior qualities that it is well above the ordinary run of written work” (Cuddon 492). It denotes primarily fictional and imaginative writing “In an expanded use, it designates also any other writings (…) that are especially distinguished in form, expression, and emotional power” (Abram and Harpham 156). Literature signifies the concept of “global body of literary writing which has been accredited with being-pointedly to borrow Matthew Arnold” famous utterance –“the best that has been known and said in the world” (Arnold 6 in Widdowson 4). It is defined in Oxford Companion to the English Language.