Why Study British Literature

Why do I have to study British Literature? I am an American. I speak the English language. Not British English, or Australian English, I speak American English. I know the history of the United States and where it came from and where the people who live in it came from. The people in the United States came from everywhere, but the country started with only a few people. The United States started with the original 13 colonies, and these were colonies of England. This may be the best reason to study English Literature. We need to know where we came from to understand where we are going to go in the future. When you start a story, you should start at the beginning, and if it is a mystery you may be puzzled..

I have found there are consistent themes, consistent topic in British Literature. These topics include the use of language, religion, history, humor, history, royalty and nobility, (which are not the same), and the sea and travel. Shakespeare covered all of these themes, and could be considered one of the fathers of British Literature.When American Literature uses these themes, I can see it sometimes builds on the British themes like the struggle of good versus evil, the knights of the Round Table. Sometimes American Literature may build its own themes.

I can learn some grammar and spelling from studying literature, and more importantly how grammar and spelling has changed over time. Where the American stories I read often have people who are relaxed, easy to understand, and sound American, Shakespeare has people who sound like they belong in a royal court, and the tales in Morte D’Arthur sound like they are from a different language. The stories are from hundreds of years ago and a continent away. If I canno...

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...p. The grammar sets the characters, and the spelling even brings out the accents. The topics may not be familiar, but they are not too hard to understand with study. I enjoy the humor in Monty Python, and other British television, such as “Are You Being Served?”, and the same humor in Monty Python’s “Spam” song can be found in the songs of the American Tom Lehr.

The history of British Literature shows how America developed in part, and how we have been well served with British Literature. Our country was founded by people tied together by language and history, devoutly religious but not always agreeing, came across the ocean still with ties to their home country. While we have cut some of the ties to the nobles and royalty, we kept many of the other ties and developed into what we are today. We need to study British Literature to study what we have become.