During the summer of 2007, I will travel to England, a land of traditions that have influenced our past and continue to shape the way we live today. I will visit a variety of literary landmarks, including the homes, colleges, and workplaces of several authors as well as the locations that served as the settings of some of the world’s most respected and enduring works of literature.
I have been a student of literature for most of my life and a teacher of literature for the past ten years. As such, I am aware that setting is an integral part of any piece of prose or poetry. At the most basic level, it serves as a backdrop or a canvas on which the events of the story occur. A closer examination of a work will show, however, that the setting fulfills a much more important function. Setting helps a reader to understand both the state of mind of individual characters and the values of the characters’ societies. It is also the most effective way for authors to demonstrate the atmosphere and mood of any story, which in turn helps the reader to understand theme. Setting can be so important in a work of literature that it can symbolically function as a character in the story, especially when the natural surroundings are shown to be an antagonistic force in the work. Indeed, Eudora Welty once said of setting, "Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Fiction depends for its life on place.” I want to better understand these places so as to better understand the role of the settings in the pieces of literature that inspire my students and me each year.
In addition, the creators of fiction depend for their lives on place. Writers are shaped as much by the places of their lives as they are by the events and the people that have touched them. Like their characters, if authors learned and grew in different places, their works would be changed immeasurably. A writer imagines a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his or her mind, a place that is rooted in his or her history. Exploring England’s literary landmarks will allow me better to understand and appreciate the lives of her revered authors and to examine the effect these writers continue to have on the England of today.
