I’m preparing for a graduate course in literary criticism I’m teaching next semester. The course serves as a capstone to our MA degree and as a launchpoint for students to write their thesis papers. Hypothetically, each course the students have taken includes a "theoretical approach." However, my experience in graduate courses is that this is not taking place, or at least is not happening in an effective way.

Unless they had theory in their undergrad work, the students know very little about Marxism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, cultural studies, feminism, and so on. As such, while the course is a capstone, it is also necessary for me to approach it as a kind of introduction to theory as well.

So here is my opening question for the course: why read literature? One possible answer is for personal enjoyment. That’s fine, but it doesn’t provide a reason for studying literature in an intellectual, academic fashion. So perhaps I should rephrase the question: what is the cultural or intellectual value of literary study?

As an outsider to literary study, I ask this question in all seriousness. I can answer this question for new media rhetoric or rhetoric in general. Briefly put, rhetorical analysis provides one with an understanding of how language functions in a community to produce knowledge, circulate values, and establish social relations. It also provides insight into the process through which language/writing is produced and the various writing practices employed in different discourse communities.

But what about literary studies? What does it have to offer? It’s not that I don’t believe there is an answer or answers to this question. I’m just interested in seeing how these students will answer it. I believe the question is a good opening into literary theory because I believe that what makes literary study valuable comes through the critical-theoretical methods we will be discussing.

So the value in reading Shakespeare, for example, lies less with being able to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of the text (indeed, such appeciation is little more than the interpellation of the reader into a particular ideological regime of taste). Instead, Shakespeare provides us insight into the developing notion of the modern human, our conceptions of race and gender at the outset of the colonial period, the conflicts between religion and science, and the tension between the ruling aristocracy and the emerging merchant class. Shakespeare is also interesting for the emblematic function his texts play in establishing a concept of literariness within English Studies. However, to draw such insight from Shakespeare requires drawing on critical methods.

In short, literary texts serve as unique historical source material; they also represent an engagement with difficult social and philosophical issues not possible in other genres (e.g. philosophical essays or scientific treatises). However, without critical methods, this knowledge is really not available to the reader. And as I have said, I don’t think these students have had much engagement with critical methods, so I’ll be curious to see what they come up with.

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