Come and join me in learning the values of studying literature to better appreciate it.

1. VALUES OF
LITERATURE
BY GESHELLOU SUACILLO

2. The phrase "values of literature" refers to those
qualities of poems, stories, novels, etc. 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.

3. It partly depends on what you are looking for
and how you tend to interact with the world. And
here is where things get interesting. . . . we do
not all agree on what to look for or how we
should interact with the world. How to read is a
matter for debate.

4. LITERATURE HAS:
Literature has entertainment value if reading it gives
occasion to enjoy yourself. This type of value is
inherently subjective because 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.

5. 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. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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 seems 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.

8. Literature has historical value if reading it gives occasion to
think about the past, how things changes overtime, and how
the world has evolved into what it is today. Historical value
sometimes overlaps with cultural value; if a work is really 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 relive them.
Of course, some things might be worth reliving, 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.

9. 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 pretty 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?"

10. Literature has moral value if reading it gives occasion
to learn a lesson. If a story or poem TEACHES us how
to live, or attempts to teach us, then it has a moral
dimension.
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.

11. Literature has ethical value if reading it gives
occasion to think about ethical questions. If a story
dramatizes conflicts and dilemmas, it is not
necessarily teaching us how to live, but it encourages
us to contemplate the codes that the characters live
by. If a poem has a speaker who promotes a
particular world view or seems conflicted about the
world he lives in, the reader can try to look through
the eyes of that speaker and see what he or she sees.
We may not agree with a speaker's or character's
morality, but seeing that morality in action can shed
light on what it means or how it changes the world. If
we reflect on a moral code, instead of simply
rejecting it or embracing it, then we are thinking
ethically, and literature that promotes such thinking is
ethically valuable.

12. Here are some important ethical questions: What is the good life? What is the
excellent life? Where do the definitions of good and excellent come from? Why
do different definitions come into conflict? On what basis do they conflict?
Remember: works that raise questions do not always answer them. To measure
the ethical value of a work of literature, we need to ask the following questions:
Do the characters make choices in the work? What are those choices?
Do the characters or speakers defend particular beliefs or points of view? What
are they?
What motivates those choices or beliefs or points of view in the work?
Where does the confidence in that motivation come from in the work?
Is there a crisis in that confidence in the work? Why?
To what place do those choices or beliefs or points of view lead in the work?