LITERATURE

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”.