Universality in Literature: Literature is great because of its universality.of elements: extracted from the chaos of life have deeper and paramount significance for all."Such also is the difference between Bharatchandra of Bengal and the annonymous puels of the Mymensingh ballads. Modern writers depending on the patronage of an, educated and well-to-do public, have developed a flair for expressing feelings and situations that are subtle and complex in language that verges on the idiosyncratic. Wordsworth realised this when he made the revolutionary, statement that poetry should use the language of common speech, The more literature is freed from its tlass limitations and becomes the expression of the thoughts

and feelings of the common man, the community of working people, the more, it will tend to

conform to the Wordsworthian doctrine."..To quote John Bailey: "It must be at once

individual life and universal. If Homer contained nothing but what was abstractedly or

universally true, he would be dull. He must have, as he has, many things which surprise,

amuse, even perhaps, disgust us who live in so different an age and country. He must have

things which are peculiar to the Greeks of his day, and even thing peculiar to himself alone

among the Greeks. Without that, he would not have individuality or even nationality: and

without Individuality and nationality there is no life in literature.....But if he were only

Homer or only Greek, he would be something worse than dull; he would be daid for us.because there would be link between us; dead, because the life of poetry needs and universal element without which its lease of life is an s a very short onc. A poet cannot carry... himself and his own age and their idiosyncracies and peculiarities unless he the elixir of immortality which is universal truth.""The recited epics of Homer, the acted plays of Shakespeare, the chanted songs of Chandidas have a more universal appeal than our modern poets and novelists who express only segments of social life and direct their appeal to particular social classes. Poetry that expresses intensely individual standpoints, novels that depict the manners of a class or community, and deal with highly specialised problems cannot surely, be of the same level as are Tulsidas's or Krittidas's Ramayana which had and still have a mass appzal."Universality in literature connotes the appeal to the widest human interests and the simp- lest human emotions Though we speak of national and race literatures, like the Greek or Teuto- nic, and though cach has certain superficial marks arising out of the peculiarities of its own people, it is nevertheless true that good literature knows no nationality, nor any bounds save those of humanity.