Can literature tell the truth better than the arts or any other area of knowledge?

Answer 1

It depends what you mean by truth. If by "truth" you mean the individual authors own personal beliefs, feelings, opinions and cosmology then yes, literature is a very good vehicle for "truth" (although, I would hesitate to say it is the best).

If by "truth" you mean "fact", then I have to disagree. Literature is not about facts.

Answer 2

Truth? Yes, literature can be expressed to reveal such understandings of the writer in which we focus on to have a more meaningful glimpse of the world. Better? Probably not, since everything from art to music to literature, all stands for a certain purpose and to share it's knowledge with the viewers. Literature can absolutely be used to explain words in images and the uses of adjectives to gain the reader's attention. Art, such as paintings and drawings, depict a visual of the painter or drawer's point of view.

Answer 3

No. Truth is relevant and can be interpreted influenced and/or skewed in many different ways. For example Christopher Columbus wasn't the only one that felt the world was round. Its said that they were even round globes already being made in his time. Aristotle made this Revelation about 2000 years prior. In other words his sails billowed for greed and conquest alone. A med evil recon if you will. However, because of a colonist by the name of Washington Irving published a book called the Life and Voyage of Christopher Columbus we now know him as we do today. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." also called the Liberty Valance effect.

Answer 4

I don't believe that the purpose of art is to be true. It's to be beautiful... I mean, obviously, it's to be beautiful, except for those who have strayed to find truth (ie, Guernica). In my opinion, literature tells the truth best because you need life inspiration for most of the things you write about. You can tweak it all you want, but the truth is, it came from your real experiences. Literature is human.

Answer 5

They are all human creations and all art. It takes an honest person to tell the truth and a witness to know it and an empiricist to validate it. If those are all the same person, your chances for having the truth of something are good, but it is yet only a chance. The Judgment is negative, the Will is positive.

Answer 6

Yes, it can. The problem is most modern writers refuse to take on provocative subjects for fear of losing readers or alienating their publishers.
In the past, when Zola wrote his famous article in Le Monde accusing the French government of corruption, it brought the government down.
When D.H.Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover, it shocked middle England as was immediately banned.
When Turgenov wrote Sketches from a Hunter's Album, depicting the poor state of the Russian peasant, it was widely accepted that this was the catalyst for the Russian Revolution in 1917.
Sadly, these days, we have a completely different breed of writer.

Answer 7

tell which truths to which persons? I mean in case you have chose to comprehend truths relating to the actual international then the organic sciences will tell the certainty greater beneficial than literature. on the different hand in case you have chose to comprehend the human situation the literature is in all probability fairly a competent source.

Answer 8

The understanding comes from the person doing the understanding and not so much the material from which they need to learn. If I heard music the message would be completely lost on me because music isn't my way of understanding the world, yet if an indepth article in a book was put under my nose I would eat it up with great gusto.

Answer 9

Litterature obviously tells something, but not necessary the truth. Everything is filtrated by author's intentions and reader's perception. Drawing definetely lies even if it doesn't want to. Sculpture is closer to the truth, but not so close. Architecture-there is some truth in the walls, hidden deeply.
Littereture is some kind of Telling, and you tell not only the truth, but also the half-truth, and, sadly, the lies.

Answer 10

I don't know if you can say "better", but better in it's own way, yes. Literature tells things from a human perspective. The sciences supply us with raw fact and abstract analyis, but humans aren't robots. We understand the world more in a literature kind of way.