Teaching Literature – an Overview

Along with the surging stream of overall civilization, the restless situation of politics, media bias, and misinformation,
the twists of modern educational theories, and the advent of social media, a significant set of questions occurs: Why read
literature? What value do literatures have?
This seems we are disconnected from God, nature, and others—but literature has the capability of restoring. So then,
what kind of literature holds such power?
The answer is the Great Book. Samuel Johnson said in his “Preface to Shakespeare” that “the only test of literary
greatness is length of duration and continuance of esteem.”
Moreover, a book may be considered great if it meets three criteria:
1. UNIVERSALITY - the book speaks to people across many ages affecting, inspiring, and changing readers far removed
from the time and place in which it was written.
2. CENTERED IN A SINGLE IDEA AND THEMES - that address matters of enduring importance.
3. FEATURES NOBLE LANGUAGE - the great book is written in beautiful language that enriches the mind and elevates
the soul.
Why reads literature? Here are six possible reasons by David M. Wright:
1. Reading great literature exercises the imagination. We enjoy stories; it is a pleasure to meet characters and to live in
their world, to experience their joys and sorrows. In a practical sense, an active imagination helps us perceive truth,
make value judgments, and deal with the complexities of life in creative ways. It even aids in our ability to use logic and
to reason well.

2. Reading literature transports us out of our current context and into other ages and places. Interacting with characters
across space and time diminishes our ignorance.

Mark Twain once remarked, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, narrowmindedness, and bigotry. Broad, wholesome, charitable
views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one’s lifetime.” Because
most of us cannot pilot a steamboat along the Mississippi River, or travel to many parts of the world as Twain was able
to do, literature serves as a worthy guide and vessel for our exploration.

3. Reading literature enables us to see the world through the eyes of others. It trains the mind to be flexible, to
comprehend other points of view—to set aside one’s personal perspectives to see life through the eyes of someone
who is of another age, class, or race. Reading literature nurtures and develops the power of sympathetic insight.

4. Great works of literature have played a fundamental role in shaping society. For example, The Epic of Gilgamesh
initiated the archetypal narrative of the hero embarking on an epic quest, which became a popular and influential
blueprint for literature the world over.

Some other landmark texts include Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Cervantes’
Don Quixote, which is credited as the first novel in the Western world, creating a genre that has since become the
dominant form of literature in the modern era.

A little later, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther was deeply influential (though not necessarily in positive ways);
Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads initiated the Romantic era in English literature, and Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped push a divided nation into civil war over slavery. In the early twentieth century,
Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle exposed the horrors of America’s meatpacking industry and caused many reforms in
the mass production of food. Books have the power to shape culture and history.

5. Reading literature fosters contemplation and reflection and improves our facility with language and vocabulary.
Interacting with these texts requires deliberate, conscious thinking to understand and retain longer units of thought.

The average number of words per sentence in the 16th century was 65-70 words, but, not surprisingly, that number has
steadily declined through the modern era to about 15 words today. Likewise, the average number of letters per word
has declined, revealing a decrease in the use of longer, higher-level words. The continual exposure to elaborate,
 elevated syntax and diction develops not only our thinking abilities, but our speaking and writing skills too. We begin to
conceive of sentences in the manner of the great writers, imitating their techniques in style and vocabulary.

T. S. Eliot in his poem Four Quartets, prophesied that we would be “distracted from distraction by distraction.”

6. Reading literature helps us to know ourselves—in short, to understand man. For the subject of literature is man. In its
pages, we learn about our creative and moral faculties, our conscience, and most importantly, our soul. We see man at
the height of his glory and the depth of his folly—with every heartrending thought, action, emotion, and belief in
between.

In other words, literature holds a mirror up to human nature, revealing its inner depths and complexities, its array of
virtues and vices; and moreover, it holds a mirror up to a cultural age, illuminating its shape and ethos. Long ago,
inscribed on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was the maxim, “Know thyself.”

 Reading literature remains the surest means to do just that—to live the life Socrates declared the only one
worth living: the examined life.

After all, literature may simply be the creative expression of metaphysics and being: In some mysterious way, each life
is every life, and all lives are one life—there is something of ourselves in each character we meet in the respected
pages of a Great Book.

VALUE OF LITERATURE
"Values of Literature" refers to those qualities of literary pieces/genre of literature that make them worthwhile to read. If we feel
our time reading is well spent, we can say that a work has value for us.
If reading the work was a complete waste, then we might say it has no value for us. And there is a spectrum between the two
extremes. Of course, if you simply do not like reading, then you really have no say in the matter. The following are the different
categories of the values of literature:
1. ENTERTAINMENT VALUE
Literature has entertainment value if reading it gives occasion to enjoy yourself; though not everyone will enjoy the
same kinds of stories, styles, or themes. Being entertained is important but being bored does not give anyone license
to reject a work outright.

At one hand, I can put the book down and not read it anymore, but I should be careful not to assume that my boredom
is somehow a characteristic of the work I tried to read. Rather, I was bored, plain, and simple. Someone else might not
be.

On the other hand, if a work is awesome to me, exciting, intriguing, etc., I should not assume that my interest is
somehow a characteristic of the work I enjoyed reading. Rather, I was interested, plain, and simple. Someone else
might not be. Literature has entertainment value when it gives an enjoyable way to pass the time.

2. POLITICAL VALUE
Literature has political value if reading it gives occasion to change how a person thinks or acts. Politics is about the
management and flow of power. And power, like electricity, flows from one end of a circuit to another to make things
happen.

Reading a work can jolt someone into action. It can reveal an injustice, outrage its readers, give voice to the
oppressed, ridicule those who are corrupt, etc. The main idea here is to think about what the work of literature is trying
to do. It has political value if it attempts to persuade people or the world to start acting and thinking in "this" way.

We can see the political leanings of a work without necessarily being persuaded ourselves. But most of the time, we
will like a work for its political leanings if we are in fact persuaded to align ourselves with the author. Literature can
change the way people live with and influence each other.

3. ARTISTIC VALUE
 Literature has artistic value if reading it gives occasion to contemplate the nature of beauty and human creativity. There
are many works of literature that experiment with the limits of language and its expressive power. If I like how words
can be manipulated to create beautiful works of art, then a work that tries to use words that way in a new and unique
way will have artistic value for me. I would say that every work of literature that we read in this course has artistic value
because they are all works that have remained important over the years for the way they extended the power of
language in a new direction. If you don't like words, it will be difficult to see the artistic value of any poem or story. The
value will still be there even if you don't see it, however. Literature helps us contemplate the nature of beauty and
human creativity.

4. CULTURAL VALUE
Literature has cultural value if reading it gives occasion to think about the place and time of the author at the time the
work was written. Authors might seem like supernatural beings or at least people who are way above us, transcending
the world down here to live among the heavens with their artistic visions, but they are actually regular people like the
rest of us. They care about what is happening in the world around them, and they have experiences in life that shape
their attitudes toward various issues. If their work addresses the attitudes, customs, and values of their time (or another
time), then the work has cultural value.

The work becomes a window into a world that is unfamiliar, and we are encouraged to compare cultural differences.
Literature sheds light on the place and time of the author of the work.

5. HISTORICAL VALUE
Literature has historical value if reading it gives occasion to think about the past, how things change overtime, and how
the world has evolved into what it is today. Historical value sometimes overlaps with cultural value; if a work is old, then
it can give us insight into a culture so far back that we can also think about how that culture might be a foundation for
our own. The cliché about history is true--the less we know about how things were, the more likely we are to revive
them. Of course, some things might be worth recalling, and we might regret some of the history we have left behind,
but other things we want to avoid repeating. Works of literature can help us learn about the past, process the past, and
use the past to our advantage. Sometimes the historical value of a work is that it shows us what we have gained and
what we have lost.

6. PHILOSOPHICAL VALUE
Literature has philosophical value if reading it gives occasion to explore the nature of human knowledge, how we know
and what we can know. These questions are central to the production of art because any artist must interact with the
world in order to represent it, whether lyrically in a poem or through storytelling in fiction; he must, to some extent, know
the world. But it is hard to be certain about what we know or even whether we can know anything at all. Some writers
explore philosophical issues deeply because they are often a source of crisis that can create great drama and raise
intriguing questions. If a work invites us to think about perception, making sense of our place in the world, or self-
awareness, then we can say that it has philosophical value. In response to such works, we tend to look inward and
wonder, "who am I?" Literature explores human knowledge, how we know and what we know.

7. MORAL VALUE
Literature is said to have moral value when it has a lesson to learn and teaches us how to live, or even just attempts to
do so, then it has a moral dimension. It is still valuable whether we like the lesson it teaches, or we don’t. The best
readers will see the moral value of a work even if the morals it endorses are somehow distasteful or good to them.

Moral value is a dangerous value to measure. The history of censorship, for instance, is based on the idea that if a
work teaches the "wrong" thing, it should not be read at all. Plato, one of the earliest philosophers to explore the moral
dimension of stories and poetry. We have to be careful, I think, not to hold moral value as the most important one.

If we reduce a story or poem to a moral lesson, or require that a story or poem BE a moral lesson that we can endorse,
then we are using literature to back up our own beliefs. To avoid this mistake, we must learn to appreciate works of
literature for its various kinds of value. "To appreciate" means "to measure the value of something," and we need to try
to find value in a work if we are inclined to reject it simply because we think it teaches the wrong lesson. Here is where
ethical value comes into play.