Why Read and Write About Literature?
When there are so many things
to study today, why study and write about literature?
Traditionally, at least two answers have been given to this question. One is
that literature is fun. It's delightful.
One of the basic purposes of literature has always been to entertain, and
anything that is genuinely entertaining has value. In this course, literature
will be our FUN-tabulous springboard into the writing
process. We'll read stories, poems and dramas, which I've selected for their
uniqueness, and find our personal and social responses to them. Believe me, it
is a good time.
The other reason we use literature in this class is because literature teaches
us many things. It not only delights us, it instructs us. We can say that
literature presents human experience; it doesn't discuss it. It shows; it
doesn't tell. It appeals to our senses and to our feelings as well as to our
minds. It enables us to see, hear and feel characters in action. In a sense, it
recreates experience. To cite just one example, a philosopher might write a
book explaining to us the defects of the philosophy called utilitarianism; but
Charles Dickens, as a writer, wrote a novel, Hard Times, in which he exposed
concretely, through a story, the problems with utilitarianisrn.
He enables us, in this way, not only to understand the problems with our minds,
but to see and hear them with our senses and feel them with our hearts as well.
But literature doesn't simply record (and show us) life, it interprets it. It
doesn't simply reflect life, it focuses it. It's a mirror, but a special kind
of mirror. It's a mirror in which we can see ourselves even more clearly, more
vividly than in an ordinary mirror. So there is implicit in every poem or play
or story a world view, a set of values. Literature (as well as philosophy) asks
and answers the big questions: 1) Where have we come
from? 2) Where are we going? 3) What is the meaning of our existence?
Literature not only asks these questions in a searching and eloquent way, but
also encourages us to find ourselves and our own personal answers. Those
reflections and our answers to those questions will become the stepping stones
to well-crafted essays. They'll become your way of recording, measuring and
challenging our views of self and society.
That's why we use Literature in this Composition class.