Essay on Language and Mores in Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio

Language and Mores in winesburg, ohio   Language and literary productions lead parallel lives. What changes most(prenominal) often and most dramatically is the phraseology we use to describe events and feelings that are common to all times. Language shifts, stretches, adopts, and absorbs -- it drops old-fashioned terms and picks up a few new ones, and you dont have to watch far to find novels and short stories grown stale from shaky, outdated prose, from in addition many neo-tropisms, catch-phrases, and slang with a short shelf-life. Literature, though inseparable from language, endures. Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio encapsulates both(prenominal) the changes that have swept up language from 1919 till the present, and the endurance of authoritative themes.   The question concerning language is, at heart, a question of mores How do you slop about yourself and others? What are we allowed to say, and how? The question posed by literature is object less(prenominal )on in nature, but it is phrased differently What is it about myself and others? The constraints in literature consult the constraints in language, but the former apply to morality, the latter to mores. pietism, broadly de beauteousd, refers to a sense of decency inherent in everyone. Mores refer to the set of constraints, a sift of value table, that a society has graveld on itself and on its members.   Morality and literature have hardly changed -- their central concerns remain the same (mans place in the universe, death, love, everything in between). Mores and language have changed -- their central concerns have altered to suit the shifting times. Its no surprise that morality often comes into contrast with mores (segregation was never moral, but it was, for a time, a more), and that literature often comes into ... ...being human.   Winesburg seems less threatening now mostly because of its language, its timidity and overuse of euphemisms (particularly the word adv enture, apply throughout to designate a sexual escapade, and Andersons proclivity to drawing the blinds on his readers when things get too hot), non because it is any less a field of study of literature. Our mores have changed in much the same way. There is a intention 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 enough 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.