Topics Literature

Question How useful is it studying literature? The reason I ask is because (at least my high school) English courses seem to miss the target. Let me explain. We read the text. We find the "what's" of the work, what the author is trying to say. And then, instead of going on to evaluate the validity of the author's opinions on the topic we go backwards! We start describing how the author conveys their themes. My answer is: who cares. I'm sure that is not what the authors want us to look at. It's like evaluating how the frame of a painting accentuates such and such, rather than looking at the painting itself. Is it a fault with the nature of the subject of literary study, do I not understand the subject properly, or is it just not for me? Thanks for your time.

Accepted:
December 28, 2008

Comments

You understand the subject correctly, I believe. The study of literature has not always been done in this way, and is not done the same way everywhere. Saying that, the study of the way literature achieves meaning and certain effects, and the relation of these to the social or intellectual climate of the time, is a dominant way of doing things. Thus, for the most part, the study of literature is the study of how literature 'works', and not the validity of any ideas it contains.

However, it's not entirely lacking in usefulness! The study of literature might unveil subtle rhetorical ploys used to make an implausible idea seem self-evident; also it might (like history) help us to understand where ideas come from, why they were believed; finally, it might help us to understand the significance ideas have in people's lives, in part by dramatising how the consequences of beliefs or actions play out. All of these things are philosophically valuable.