Literature, the art of the written words, a special,
unique and strong art, which has the capacity to change the people mind and
affect to the behavior of these ones, a beautiful art which has been between us
from the creation of writing. Literature has a different importance in every
place, every country, every person, native people or even who do not read. The
nowadays society has gave to the literature a great importance, but it depends
of every one to accept this importance or give it more or less importance. It is certain that literature is an important
player inside of every one of world’s countries, because literature has played
a direct or indirect role in the nation development and the society formation;
moreover, through literature we can know and learn many different things such
as important or famous dead people, historic facts, our imagination capacity
grows more and more, new vocabulary or lexical acquisitions, inter alia.
Talking about New Zealand’s literature -and starting
with our issue on itself- it is very important and has played an important role
on the national development and it has influenced to the society behavior. New
Zealand is the birthplace of great authors or writers such as Katherine
Mansfield, Janet Frame, Roger Hall or Witi Ihimaera, against others authors.
At the beginning of New Zealand, when it was a colony,
disembarked on the islands the British literature and the world literature in
general, native people found in colonizers “the writing”, which was used by
natives (Maori people) for writing their oral traditions on paper, and from
this way, while the time passed by, writers were born on the islands and the
New Zealand literature too. Nevertheless, nowadays, there is a debate between
many writers from this country, because of some writers said that there is not
a New Zealand literature, only exists a “British literature”, or as Witi
Ihimaera name it “the Commonwealth literature”.
Witi Ihimaera in his essay “New Zealand literature: writing from the edge of the universe” said
that the New Zealand’s literature is recently creating its own identity, but
have achieved to separating from the “Commonwealth literature”.
If we can give a look through New Zealand’s literature
history, we can appreciate that its literature is until today a sub-type of
Britain literature, because in this last one, New Zealand literature has based
on. Researching through some websites and writer opinions, we could make an
opinion about New Zealand’s literature. We think that this literature cannot be
named “commonwealth literature”, together with the great writers from New
Zealand and their amazing books, essays and all of their important works, allow
to New Zealand have an own literature; furthermore, New Zealand’s literature is
a mix of Maori culture and New Zealand culture and there are writers, who write
in Maori, which are another point in favor to this theory.
Continuing with literature; poetry is the most
influenced by New Zealand places and times. However, poetry has been on the
islands so much time before English settlement. Maori culture has had a kind of
sung poems called “waiata”. And after
the English settlement, sung poems were predominantly on almost all the poetry
in those times.
Children literature is also an important kind of
literature on New Zealand Country; but according to us, it is the most
important kind of literature –not only on New Zealand whether on the whole
World; because of this literature is very influential in children and teenagers.
Through of the children growth, it is typical reading them tales or short stories
from children books. One of the most important writers in this aim is Margaret
Mahy who won on forming the children mind and creating a new individual who
will be, in a future, one more person in the society and exactly the children
behavior depends on how to children reared the Hans Christian Anderson award
thanks to her writings for children.
New Zealand’s playwrights are a community extremely
active, and are supported by the Playmarket. The major exponent between New
Zealand’s playwrights is Roger Hall, who is also an actor and his magnum opus
is “Middle Age Spread” (1978). Coming back to Playmarket, it is a national
organization which; moreover, sells and publishes scripts and plays. This
Organization represents Maori people and the pacific islands.
But, on the other hand:
“Another issue that affects this question is that, as
far as this new identity is concerned, New Zealand is a very youthful society –
yours in Japan, by comparison, is centuries older. As a consequence, our
artistic and, in particular, written literary production is still relatively
young.” (Witi Ihimaera, p. 2)
As a W. Ihimaera mentioned in his essay, the
literature of New Zealand is a very youthful nation, but we think that with
almost two hundred years of antique, has been able to forge an artistic and
literary base; which until today has been an indispensable part of the society
formation, and an kind of rope, which has been linked two cultures, New Zealand
culture and Maori culture. Furthermore, it has been a door for New Zealand will
be open to the world.
Despite of debatable origins of New Zealand’s
literature between the writers, this literature; which comes from the edge of
the world, from two great islands, is a great and powerful literature which
brings us a huge and rich cultural legacy. This cultural legacy every one of us
is able to access and study it or learn more about it, in other words, enjoy
it. Under our point of view, we can recognize that New Zealand’s literature has
been linked to the English literature or “Commonwealth literature”;
nevertheless, New Zealand’s literature has been able to be totally divided from
English literature. The way which this literature has been adding Maori
cultural resources, for this reason and another ones, we can say that the
literature from New Zealand is a literature with a well-deserve own identity;
and also for us, an unmistakable identity.
It is really amazing, how things change with the time
passed by, who thought that two and isolated islands as New Zealand had dream
places, which were used by producers like J.B. Tolkein in his worldly famous
movie “The Lord of the Rings” or by the producer C. Lewis in his also worldly
famous movie “The Chronicles of Narnia”. We can discover or imagine this places
by pictures, movies or through of literature, in words of poets which express
those beautiful places in beautiful words, able to make us believe that we are
there and to be able to say “here is where dreams come true”.
