Online Discuss on 'Oneness of Literature'

Everything has it's origin either it is material thing or Human being or nature. i.e Water is just a water either it comes from ocean or from river, in the same way Human is just a Human either male or female. Only the difference is a different types of that particular thing. so poetry, short stories, novels are ultimately the Literature, the only difference is it,s form or matrix in which it is being shaped. Such critics has tries to prove that literature is just a literature or literature comes from Literature, it means one literature always comes from any other literature and that is called the oneness of literature.

          According to T.S Eliot,

"what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.”

According to Northrop Frye, 

        "Every organized body of knowledge can be learned progressively; and experience shows that there is also something progressive about the learning of literature.He developed theory of Archetypal criticism based on the idea that whole of the literature has oneness of its existence. All literature shares common DNA or skeleton". 

Now let us compare some lines from 'Wasteland' by T.S Eliot and Short story 'A Joke' by Anton Chekhov

And when we were children, staying at the archduke's, 
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, 
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. 
In the mountains, there you feel free.

These lines indicates very deep meaning, this shows the superiority of man upon the Woman. She is frightened to do coasting but her cousin helps her to get rid of that fear. and sexual perversion is also there in this poem.

Now, in the short story 'A Joke' by Anton Chekhov is also the same kind of story, difference is just in their names. Eliot's 'Wasteland' concerns with the sexual perversion but this is story seems to have the theme of love as there is nothing which indicate the sensuality or sexuality in it. In the short story the nature like snow, wind etc. plays a vital role.

So, observing the poem as well as short story we can say that the matrix in which both lies is same, the theme are just different. so it clearly indicates the oneness of literature where story goes on in a same way but though meaning of both different.