Why study literature in another language?

Jump right into the country’s culture

Reading in another language immediately immerses the reader in the culture and community of the language being studied. The texts studied at A-level (and hopefully, before) are authentic language in use, written by native-speaker authors and intended for a native-speaker audience, bringing their own cultural and community context. Reading foreign literature in this way helps your language because you can work out how and when different types of language should be used. For instance, it is extremely useful to know what register of language would be suitable for the many social settings in which you could find yourself when in a different language community. Through reading foreign literature you are able to transfer the knowledge you gain to real-life communicative settings, and in so doing, refine your language skills. For example, reading Spanish or Italian literature will help you find out when it is more appropriate to use ‘tu’ versus when to use ‘usted’ or ‘Lei’. Learning a language in this way, while still taking place in an “artificial” setting such as in a classroom or with a tutor, moves you towards greater linguistic authenticity and immersion.

Open your mind

Through reading literature in another language, you begin to access new ways of thinking and other traditions. In improving our knowledge and understanding of other languages and cultures, we become more cultured, and intercultural, ourselves: we learn more about the literary, philosophical and religious traditions across the world, as well as about prominent politicians, economists, mathematicians and scientists. If you want to learn about existentialism, you could read some Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre in French. Or you could learn about the nature of Latin American dictatorships by reading novels in Spanish by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. Reading literature from different countries helps us to interpret the world around us and how humans behave across cultures. We sometimes use this contact with other traditions and cultures to inform or compare our understanding of the world and how we might, or might not, like to be in it.

Boost your reading and literary analysis skills

Reading, like any other skill in life, requires practice to become really good at it. The chances are that the more you read in your own language, as well as in any other, the better you are at spelling, writing, structuring your writing, as well as using the subset of skills required when you read. That is to say, you are good at extracting details, linking to themes, making meaning, and making inferences. The more you read, the better you are at doing all of those things. So when you read in another language, you are bolstering all of those skills in two languages, your own and another, as well as improving the language you are learning. When reading in another language, the goal is to read as you would in your own language, that is, reading to understand the overall meaning rather than know the meaning of every last word (which is how we tend to read in an unfamiliar language). If you are able to do the latter, you are already an excellent reader and linguist!

Recommended texts

Spanish

Sin Noticias de Gurb, Eduardo Mendoza El coronel no tiene quien le escriba, Gabriel García Márquez La casa de Bernarda Alba, Federico Garcia Lorca

French

La vie devant soi, Romain Gary Candide, Voltaire L’étranger, Albert Camus

Italian

Io e te, Niccolò Ammaniti Blacks out, Vladimiro Polchi I promessi sposi, Alessandro Manzoni

English

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James Skin and Other Short Stories, Roald Dahl The Railway Children, Edith Nesbit