Literature Has Two Faces
Literature literally means acquaintance with words, as in the first sense given in the oxford dictionary. One can say that words are difficult to acquaint with; however there are some authors who have managed to befriend them. Occidental literature has been greatly influenced by many authors from the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries who had created a new extent to the world of literature. Two such figures are William Shakespeare and Cervantes, two of the most important and most celebrated men. Although these two men come from different countries and backgrounds, their lives seemed to be shaped in a similar manner. As English is known to be the language of Shakespeare, so Spanish is known to be the language of Cervantes. These authors controlled the principle languages of two major empires. From this, sixteenth century Europe witnessed two different, yet similar, masters of words who shared a similar style of writing, faced similar kinds of problems in their lives, and whose works have made a similarly eternal impact on world literature.
The power of the two authors lies under their genius and ability to slip taboo messages into their work, messages that eventually grew timeless. Both Shakespeare and Cervantes received higher education from well-known universities, which was a very hard thing to do in their era. As a result, Shakespeare gave birth to some of the most exquisite production of his time. This can easily be seen through his plays and his sonnets that have a polyvalent style; he had this magnificent talent of representing the aspects of human nature using romance and humor in order to pass interesting messages to his readers and his audience. For example, Hamlet (1603), one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies had created a key reference of the psycho critique with its famous prologue, from which “To be or not to be; that is the question.” This line has become a pass partout that everyone refers to...