Essay on Language and Mores in Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio

Language and Mores in winesburg, ohio   Language and literary works lead par every last(predicate)el lives. What changes near often and most dramatically is the language we use to describe events and feelings that are common to all times. Language shifts, stretches, adopts, and absorbs -- it drops antiquated terms and picks up a few raw ones, and you dont have to look far to find novels and short stories grown frigid from shaky, outdated prose, from too many neo-tropisms, catch-phrases, and slang with a short shelf-life. Literature, though inseparable from language, endures. Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio encapsulates both the changes that have swept up language from 1919 coin bank the present, and the endurance of certain themes.   The unbelief concerning language is, at heart, a question of mores How do you talk about yourself and others? What are we allowed to say, and how? The question posed by writings is moral in nature, hardly it is phrased differently Wh at is it about myself and others? The constraints in literature reflect the constraints in language, but the former apply to righteousness, the last mentioned to mores. Morality, broadly defined, refers to a sense of decency inherent in everyone. Mores refer to the specify of constraints, a sort of value table, that a society has placed on itself and on its members.   Morality and literature have hardly changed -- their primordial concerns persevere the same (mans place in the universe, death, love, everything in between). Mores and language have changed -- their central concerns have adapted to suit the shifting times. Its no surprise that morality often comes into conflict with mores (segregation was never moral, but it was, for a time, a more), and that literature often comes into ... ...being human.   Winesburg seems little threatening now mostly because of its language, its timidity and utilize of euphemisms (particularly the word adventure, used throughout to designate a sexual escapade, and Andersons proclivity to drawing the blinds on his readers when things get too hot), not because it is any less a work of literature. Our mores have changed in much the same way. there is a temperament these days to spell everything out, moles and all, the more explicit the confessional the better, and this tendency will most likely pass. Our current mores are consistent ample with morality -- they are, in fact, outward signs that we are moral people -- but they are not inflexible. It is through the filters of language and mores that we look at literature and morality. And Andersons Winesburg seems to be doing fine on both counts. Its still standing.