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2 The Purpose of Literature

What is literature for.

One of the primary goals of this course is to develop an understanding of the importance of literature as a vital source of cultural knowledge in everyday life. Literature is often viewed as a collection of made-up stories, designed to entertain us, to amuse us, or to simply provide us with an escape from the “real” world.

Although literature does serve these purposes, in this course, one of the ways that we will answer the question “What is literature for?” is by showing that literature can provide us with valuable insights about the  world  in which we live and about our  relationships  to one another, as well as to  ourselves  . In this sense, literature may be considered a vehicle for the exploration and discovery of our world and the culture in which we live. It allows us to explore alternative realities, to view things from the perspective of someone completely different to us, and to reflect upon our own intellectual and emotional responses to the complex challenges of everyday life.

By studying literature, it is possible to develop an in-depth understanding of the ways that we use language to make sense of the world. According to the literary scholars, Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, “Stories are everywhere,” and therefore, “Not only do we tell stories, but stories tell us: if stories are everywhere, we are also in stories.” From the moment each one of us is born, we are surrounded by stories — oftentimes these stories are told to us by parents, family members, or our community. Some of these stories are ones that we read for ourselves, and still others are stories that we tell to ourselves about who we are, what we desire, what we fear, and what we value. Not all of these stories are typically considered “literary” ones, but in this course, we will develop a more detailed understanding of how studying literature can enrich our knowledge about ourselves and the world in which we live.

If literature helps us to make sense of, or better yet question, the world and our place in it, then how does it do this? It may seem strange to suggest that literature performs a certain kind of work. However, when we think of other subjects, such as math or science, it is generally understood that the skills obtained from mastering these subjects equips us to solve practical problems. Can the same be said of literature?

To understand the kind of work that literature can do, it is important to understand the kind of knowledge that it provides. This is a very complex and widely debated question among literary scholars. But one way of understanding the kind of knowledge that can be gained from literature is by thinking about how we use language to make sense of the world each day.  (1)

What does literature do?

Every day we use  metaphors  to describe the world. What is a metaphor? According to  A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory  , a metaphor is “a figure of speech in which one thing is described in terms of another.” You have probably heard the expressions, “Time is money” or “The administration is a train wreck.” These expressions are metaphors because they describe one less clearly defined idea, like time or the administration of an institution, in relation to a concept whose characteristics are easier to imagine.

A metaphor forms an implied comparison between two terms whereas a  simile  makes an explicit comparison between two terms using the words like or as — for example, in his poem, “A Red, Red Rose,” the Scottish poet Robert Burns famously announces, “O my Luve is like a red, red rose/That’s newly sprung in June.” The association of romantic love with red roses is so firmly established in our culture that one need only look at the imagery associated with Valentine’s Day to find evidence of its persistence. The knowledge we gain from literature can have a profound influence on our patterns of thought and behavior.

In their book  Metaphors We Live By  , George Lakoff and Mark Johnson outline a number of metaphors used so often in everyday conversation that we have forgotten that they are even metaphors, for example, the understanding that “Happy is up” or that “Sad is down.” Likewise, we might think “Darkness is death” or that “Life is light.” Here we can see that metaphors help us to recognize and make sense of a wide range of very complex ideas and even emotions. Metaphors are powerful, and as a result they can even be problematic.

The author Toni Morrison has argued that throughout history the language used by many white authors to describe black characters often expresses ideas of fear or dread — the color black and black people themselves come to represent feelings of loathing, mystery, or dread. Likewise, James Baldwin has observed that whiteness is often presented as a metaphor for safety.  (1)

Figure 1 is taken from a book published in 1857 entitled  Indigenous Races of the Earth  . It demonstrates how classical ideas of beauty and sophistication were associated with an idealized version of white European society whereas people of African descent were considered to be more closely related to apes. One of Morrison’s tasks as a writer is to rewrite the racist literary language that has been used to describe people of color and their lives.

By being able to identify and question the metaphors that we live by, it is possible to gain a better understanding of how we view our world, as well as our relationship to others and ourselves. It is important to critically examine these metaphors because they have very real consequences for our lives.  (1)

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literature , a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language , national origin, historical period, genre , and subject matter.

For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical regions, see such articles as African literature ; African theater ; Oceanic literature ; Western literature ; Central Asian arts ; South Asian arts ; and Southeast Asian arts . Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Arabic literature , Celtic literature , Latin literature , French literature , Japanese literature , and biblical literature ).

Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But such definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is. And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from the Latin littera , “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing.

But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values.

The scope of literature

Literature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed in words—even when organized and written down—is counted as literature. Those writings that are primarily informative—technical, scholarly, journalistic—would be excluded from the rank of literature by most, though not all, critics. Certain forms of writing, however, are universally regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Individual attempts within these forms are said to succeed if they possess something called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The nature of artistic merit is less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific exposition might be of great literary value and a pedestrian poem of none at all.

The purest (or, at least, the most intense) literary form is the lyric poem, and after it comes elegiac, epic , dramatic, narrative, and expository verse. Most theories of literary criticism base themselves on an analysis of poetry , because the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not called poetry at all but verse . Many novels —certainly all the world’s great novels—are literature, but there are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered literature (although the Chinese , possessors of one of the world’s greatest dramatic traditions, consider their plays, with few exceptions, to possess no literary merit whatsoever).

The Greeks thought of history as one of the seven arts, inspired by a goddess, the muse Clio. All of the world’s classic surveys of history can stand as noble examples of the art of literature, but most historical works and studies today are not written primarily with literary excellence in mind, though they may possess it, as it were, by accident.

The essay was once written deliberately as a piece of literature: its subject matter was of comparatively minor importance. Today most essays are written as expository, informative journalism , although there are still essayists in the great tradition who think of themselves as artists. Now, as in the past, some of the greatest essayists are critics of literature, drama , and the arts.

Some personal documents ( autobiographies , diaries , memoirs , and letters ) rank among the world’s greatest literature. Some examples of this biographical literature were written with posterity in mind, others with no thought of their being read by anyone but the writer. Some are in a highly polished literary style; others, couched in a privately evolved language, win their standing as literature because of their cogency, insight, depth, and scope.

Many works of philosophy are classed as literature. The Dialogues of Plato (4th century bc ) are written with great narrative skill and in the finest prose; the Meditations of the 2nd-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are a collection of apparently random thoughts, and the Greek in which they are written is eccentric . Yet both are classed as literature, while the speculations of other philosophers, ancient and modern, are not. Certain scientific works endure as literature long after their scientific content has become outdated. This is particularly true of books of natural history, where the element of personal observation is of special importance. An excellent example is Gilbert White’s Natural History and Antiquities of Selbourne (1789).

Oratory , the art of persuasion, was long considered a great literary art. The oratory of Native Americans, for instance, is famous, while in Classical Greece, Polymnia was the muse sacred to poetry and oratory. Rome’s great orator Cicero was to have a decisive influence on the development of English prose style. Abraham Lincoln ’s Gettysburg Address is known to every American schoolchild. Today, however, oratory is more usually thought of as a craft than as an art. Most critics would not admit advertising copywriting, purely commercial fiction , or cinema and television scripts as accepted forms of literary expression, although others would hotly dispute their exclusion. The test in individual cases would seem to be one of enduring satisfaction and, of course, truth. Indeed, it becomes more and more difficult to categorize literature, for in modern civilization words are everywhere. Humans are subject to a continuous flood of communication . Most of it is fugitive, but here and there—in high-level journalism, in television, in the cinema, in commercial fiction, in westerns and detective stories, and in plain, expository prose—some writing, almost by accident, achieves an aesthetic satisfaction, a depth and relevance that entitle it to stand with other examples of the art of literature.

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Introduction to Literature: What? Why? How?

When is the last time you read a book or a story simply because it interested you? If you were to classify that book, would you call it fiction or literature? This is an interesting separation, with many possible reasons for it. One is that “fiction” and “literature” are regarded as quite different things. “Fiction,” for example, is what people read for enjoyment. “Literature” is what they read for school. Or “fiction” is what living people write and is about the present. “Literature” was written by people (often white males) who have since died and is about times and places that have nothing to do with us. Or “fiction” offers everyday pleasures, but “literature” is to be honored and respected, even though it is boring. Of course, when we put anything on a pedestal, we remove it from everyday life, so the corollary is that literature is to be honored and respected, but it is not to be read, certainly not by any normal person with normal interests.

Sadly, it is the guardians of literature, that is, of the classics, who have done so much to take the life out of literature, to put it on a pedestal and thereby to make it an irrelevant aspect of American life. People study literature because they love literature. They certainly don’t do it for the money. But what happens too often, especially in colleges, is that teachers forget what it was that first interested them in the study of literature. They forget the joy that they first felt (and perhaps still feel) as they read a new novel or a poem or as they reread a work and saw something new in it. Instead, they erect formidable walls around these literary works, giving the impression that the only access to a work is through deep learning and years of study. Such study is clearly important for scholars, but this kind of scholarship is not the only way, or even necessarily the best way, for most people to approach literature. Instead it makes the literature seem inaccessible. It makes the literature seem like the province of scholars. “Oh, you have to be smart to read that,” as though Shakespeare or Dickens or Woolf wrote only for English teachers, not for general readers.

What is Literature?

In short, literature evokes imaginative worlds through the conscious arrangement of words that tell a story. These stories are told through different genres, or types of literature, like novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and the essay. Each genre is associated with certain conventions. In this course, we will study poetry, short fiction, and drama (in the form of movies).

Some Misconceptions about Literature

Of course, there are a number of misconceptions about literature that have to be gotten out of the way before anyone can enjoy it. One misconception is that literature is full of  hidden meanings . There are certainly occasional works that contain hidden meanings. The biblical book of  Revelation , for example, was written in a kind of code, using images that had specific meanings for its early audience but that we can only recover with a great deal of difficulty. Most literary works, however, are not at all like that. Perhaps an analogy will illustrate this point. When I take my car to my mechanic because something is not working properly, he opens the hood and we both stand there looking at the engine. But after we have looked for a few minutes, he is likely to have seen what the problem is, while I could look for hours and never see it. We are looking at the same thing. The problem is not hidden, nor is it in some secret code. It is right there in the open, accessible to anyone who knows how to “read” it, which my mechanic does and I do not. He has been taught how to “read” automobile engines and he has practiced “reading” them. He is a good “close reader,” which is why I continue to take my car to him.

The same thing is true for readers of literature. Generally authors want to communicate with their readers, so they are not likely to hide or disguise what they are saying, but reading literature also requires some training and some practice. Good writers use language very carefully, and readers must learn how to be sensitive to that language, just as the mechanic must learn to be sensitive to the appearances and sounds of the engine. Everything that the writer wants to say, and much that the writer may not be aware of, is there in the words. We simply have to learn how to read them.

Another popular misconception is that a literary work has a  single “meaning”  (and that only English teachers know how to find that meaning). There is an easy way to dispel this misconception. Just go to a college library and find the section that holds books on Shakespeare. Choose one play,  Hamlet , for example, and see how many books there are about it, all by scholars who are educated, perceptive readers. Can it be the case that one of these books is correct and all the others are mistaken? And if the correct one has already been written, why would anyone need to write another book about the play? The answer is this:

Key Takeaways

There is no single correct way to read any piece of literature. 

Again, let me use an analogy to illustrate this point. Suppose that everyone at a meeting were asked to describe a person who was standing in the middle of the room. Imagine how many different descriptions there would be, depending on where the viewer sat in relation to the person. For example, an optometrist in the crowd might focus on the person’s glasses; a hair stylist might focus on the person’s haircut; someone who sells clothing might focus on the style of dress; a podiatrist might focus on the person’s feet. Would any of these descriptions be incorrect? Not necessarily, but they would be determined by the viewers’ perspectives. They might also be determined by such factors as the viewers’ ages, genders, or ability to move around the person being viewed, or by their previous acquaintance with the subject. So whose descriptions would be correct? Conceivably all of them, and if we put all of these correct descriptions together, we would be closer to having a full description of the person.

This is most emphatically NOT to say, however, that all descriptions are correct simply because each person is entitled to his or her opinion

If the podiatrist is of the opinion that the person is five feet, nine inches tall, the podiatrist could be mistaken. And even if the podiatrist actually measures the person, the measurement could be mistaken. Everyone who describes this person, therefore, must offer not only an opinion but also a basis for that opinion. “My feeling is that this person is a teacher” is not enough. “My feeling is that this person is a teacher because the person’s clothing is covered with chalk dust and because the person is carrying a stack of papers that look like they need grading” is far better, though even that statement might be mistaken.

So it is with literature. As we read, as we try to understand and interpret, we must deal with the text that is in front of us ; but we must also recognize (1) that language is slippery and (2) that each of us individually deals with it from a different set of perspectives. Not all of these perspectives are necessarily legitimate, and it is always possible that we might misread or misinterpret what we see. Furthermore, it is possible that contradictory readings of a single work will both be legitimate, because literary works can be as complex and multi-faceted as human beings. It is vital, therefore, that in reading literature we abandon both the idea that any individual’s reading of a work is the “correct” one and the idea that there is one simple way to read any work. Our interpretations may, and probably should, change according to the way we approach the work. If we read The Chronicles of Narnia as teenagers, then in middle age, and then in old age, we might be said to have read three different books. Thus, multiple interpretations, even contradictory interpretations, can work together to give us a fuller and possibly more interesting understanding of a work.

Why Reading Literature is Important

Reading literature can teach us new ways to read, think, imagine, feel, and make sense of our own experiences. Literature forces readers to confront the complexities of the world, to confront what it means to be a human being in this difficult and uncertain world, to confront other people who may be unlike them, and ultimately to confront themselves.

The relationship between the reader and the world of a work of literature is complex and fascinating. Frequently when we read a work, we become so involved in it that we may feel that we have become part of it. “I was really into that movie,” we might say, and in one sense that statement can be accurate. But in another sense it is clearly inaccurate, for actually we do not enter the movie or the story as IT enters US; the words enter our eyes in the form of squiggles on a page which are transformed into words, sentences, paragraphs, and meaningful concepts in our brains, in our imaginations, where scenes and characters are given “a local habitation and a name.” Thus, when we “get into” a book, we are actually “getting into” our own mental conceptions that have been produced by the book, which, incidentally, explains why so often readers are dissatisfied with cinematic or television adaptations of literary works.

In fact, though it may seem a trite thing to say, writers are close observers of the world who are capable of communicating their visions, and the more perspectives we have to draw on, the better able we should be to make sense of our lives. In these terms, it makes no difference whether we are reading a Homeric epic poem like The Odysse y, a twelfth-century Japanese novel like  The Tale of Genji , or a Victorian novel by Dickens, or even, in a sense, watching someone’s TikTok video (a video or movie is also a kind of text that can be “read” or analyzed for multiple meanings). The more different perspectives we get, the better. And it must be emphasized that we read such works not only to be well-rounded (whatever that means) or to be “educated” or for antiquarian interest. We read them because they have something to do with us, with our lives. Whatever culture produced them, whatever the gender or race or religion of their authors, they relate to us as human beings; and all of us can use as many insights into being human as we can get. Reading is itself a kind of experience, and while we may not have the time or the opportunity or  or physical possibility  to experience certain things in the world, we can experience them through reading. So literature allows us to broaden our experiences.

Reading also forces us to focus our thoughts. The world around us is so full of stimuli that we are easily distracted. Unless we are involved in a crisis that demands our full attention, we flit from subject to subject. But when we read a book, even a book that has a large number of characters and covers many years, the story and the writing help us to focus, to think about what they show us in a concentrated manner. When I hold a book, I often feel that I have in my hand another world that I can enter and that will help me to understand the everyday world that I inhabit.

Literature invites us to  meet interesting characters and to visit interesting places, to use our imagination and to think about things that might otherwise escape our notice, to see the world from perspectives that we would otherwise not have.

Watch this video for a discussion of why reading fiction matters.

How to Read Literature: The Basics

• Read with a pen in hand! Yes, even if you’re reading an electronic text, in which case you may want to open a new document in which you can take notes. Jot down questions, highlight things you find significant, mark confusing passages, look up unfamiliar words/references, and record first impressions.
• Think critically to form a response. Here are some things to be aware of and look for in the story that may help you form an idea of meaning.
• Repetitions . You probably know from watching movies that if something is repeated, that means something. Stories are similar—if something occurs more than once, the story is calling attention to it, so notice it and consider why it is repeated. The repeated element can be a word or a phrase, an action, even a piece of clothing or gear.
• Not Quite Right : If something that happens that seems Not Quite Right to you, that may also have some particular meaning. So, for example, if a violent act is committed against someone who’s done nothing wrong, that is unusual, unexpected, that is, Not Quite Right. And therefore, that act means something.
• Address your own biases and compare your own experiences with those expressed in the piece.
• Test your positions and thoughts about the piece with what others think (we’ll do some of this in class discussions).

While you will have your own individual connection to a piece based on your life experiences, interpreting literature is not a willy-nilly process. Each piece of writing has purpose, usually more than one purpose–you, as the reader, are meant to uncover purpose in the text. As the speaker notes in  the video you watched about how to read literature, you, as a reader, also have a role to play. Sometimes you may see something in the text that speaks to you; whether or not the author intended that piece to be there, it still matters to you.

For example, I’ve had a student who had life experiences that she was reminded of when reading “Chonguita, the Monkey Bride” and another student whose experience was mirrored in part of “The Frog King or Iron Heinrich.” I encourage you to honor these perceptions if they occur to you and possibly even to use them in your writing assignments. I can suggest ways to do this if you’re interested.

But remember that when we write about literature, our observations must also be supported by the text itself. Make sure you aren’t reading into the text something that isn’t there. Value the text for what is and appreciate the experience it provides, all while you attempt to create a connection with your experiences.

Attributions:

• Content written by Dr. Karen Palmer and licensed  CC BY NC SA .
• Content adapted from  Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity  by Theodore L. Steinberg and licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The Worry Free Writer  by Dr. Karen Palmer is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Introduction to Literature Copyright © by Judy Young is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Purpose of Literature – and Who Cares?

A speech delivered by Natalie Babbitt for the Ann Carroll Moore Lecture at the New York Public Library, 1989.

Last summer I gave a speech at the annual children’s book conference at Simmons College in Boston, and afterwards, during the question-and-answer period, a young woman asked me why I don’t write books about the current societal problems of American children. She was especially concerned, she said, about poverty, drugs, and sexual abuse. These were topics, she said, that needed to be treated in books for children because such books could help children to deal with them. My answer was, I’m afraid, rather knee-jerk and glib. “That” I said grandly, “is not the purpose of literature.”

I have been thinking about that question, and my answer to it, ever since. And then, only a couple of weeks ago, in The New York Times Book Review , an essay by Mark Jonathan Harris raised it once again. He suggested – and I more or less quote – that “because there are no easy solutions to [social problems]. . . most writers simply avoid dealing with [them]” and warned that “it is critical that we not disdain or ignore the experience of one-fifth of our children.” Again I found myself saying, but only to myself this time, thank goodness, “That is not the purpose of literature.” But I began to realize that unless I could satisfy myself as to what the purpose of literature is, it wasn’t much use to say what it isn’t.

By the way, please do not think for one instant that I take lightly the terrible conditions under which so many American children are living. In a time of great change in Eastern Europe, with a chance at last for freedom and democracy in places where things have been very dark for a long, long time, we have these sorrows here, and it is difficult to make sense of the contrast. The changes in Europe are new and exciting, the sorrows here are as old as time and as resistant to solution. But the purpose here is not to talk about the sorrows themselves. The purpose is to talk about literature.

One of the things that makes the children’s book field different from the adult book field is that there are a number of implied responsibilities for us that are simply never thought of by adult writers. All writers are expected, and rightly so, to keep their work free of any personal racism, sexism, or religious bias. But beyond that, I don’t think people who write fiction for adults give much if any thought to being helpful or useful to their readers. The old maxim that says writers should write about what they know is in full sway, just as much as it ever was, and so subjects and settings and points of view are just as varied as they ever were. It’s hard to imagine anyone seriously suggesting – in an Authors Guild meeting, for instance – that everyone from Tom Wolfe to Judith Krantz should start writing about poverty and drugs and sexual abuse, even though these terrible problems are making as least as many adults miserable as children. Writers for adults would probably say – though this is only conjecture on my part since I haven’t asked any of them – I would have, but I don’t know any – they would probably say that they are writing in response to an inner impulse, as opposed to one or another need on the part of the reading public.

There have been books for adults written in direct response to pressing social problems. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one. Another is The Grapes of Wrath . But there aren’t many that have lasted. And there aren’t many that are written simply to be sympathetic. They tend to be written out of moral outrage, and they are directed at the general public, the general reader. Their object is to make a noise and bring about social change, and some have been remarkably successful at this. Then, once the problem has either been solved or has faded into unimportance, most of these books disappear. I really don’t think John Steinbeck expected migrant workers to read The Grapes of Wrath and be comforted by it, any more than Harriet Beecher Stowe expected Uncle Tom’s Cabin to be read by slaves.

The novels of Charles Dickens have lasted, and you could argue that Dickens always wrote about pressing social problems. But it’s not the same thing. He wrote often about the miseries of his own childhood, and in doing so, he was following the maxim: he was writing about what he knew, from his own experience, and his own experience is what brings the passion and the truth to his characters and makes them durable.

But the young woman at the Simmons conference and Mark Jonathan Harris in his Times essay, were not suggesting that writers for children address the general public and raise a cry for change. They were suggesting, unless I misunderstood them, that we write for the children themselves with the idea of bringing directly to them sympathy, encouragement, and the realization that they are not alone. These things are extremely important. They are things that fiction can bring to readers of any age who suffer from any kind of problem. But only if, like Dickens’s novels, they are full of truth. Truth would make enormous difficulties for the average writer. What is being suggested is a tall order for those who have not undergone themselves the particular, specific miseries that plague so many of today’s children. It requires either a great leap of the imagination on the one hand or, on the other hand, research of a kind to which most writers would be understandably reluctant to submit themselves. It is an order that leads a writer away from the general to focus on the particular – to write directly to the present needs of one segment of the child population, to think specifically of the audience, to find motivation outside his own life. It is an order that could be filled far more effectively and efficiently by social workers and psychologists than by writers of fiction. The world in which we live, which produces the problems of children, cannot be changed by writers of children’s books because children’s books are not read by the general public, and the general public is the only part of the population with the power to make changes. Children have no power.

And there is another uncomfortable piece to this tall order: it may preclude the creation of good fiction. So, well, what is good fiction anyway, and why bother with it when there are children in need for whom it may be useless? Might it not be better to bring to those children some sense that they are not alone, than to worry about creating good fiction? Talk about tall orders! At this point, in preparing this paper, I began to wish I’d chosen to talk about something easy, like fantasy. I’m not a critic, and any definition of literature from me is bound to be as full of holes as an old screen door. Is literature fiction that in some way enlarges the soul, by which I mean that it somehow takes the reader beyond his own life and his own experience and shows him how human beings are alike rather than how they are different? Maybe. A poet, whose name I am sorry to say I cannot remember, said recently on television that if you reach down deeply enough into your own psyche, you come to the place where the things you write about are no longer personal but universal. That was good, I thought. That was maybe a satisfying definition of good fiction: it goes beyond the personal into the universal.

But — what’s the use of universals to a child made miserable by the dreary facts of his own immediate existence? Who cares what the soul is doing when the body is besieged by present dangers? Maybe it’s a luxury to try to enlarge a soul. Maybe the only souls that can be enlarged are souls in comfortable, well-fed bodies, for there’s an old saying that when poverty comes in through the door, love goes out the window. To which I would add that along with love goes philosophy. Maybe those of us who have been fond of saying that all writing is alike, regardless of the intended audience, are full of hot air. It may be true that those who write fiction for adults have no responsibility towards their readers, but it may be equally true that someone who writes fiction for children does have responsibilities and should be drummed out of the field if he doesn’t make an effort to meet them.

And yet – you see, I have this deeply-held conviction, with no clear idea of where it came from, that you can’t write a decent book if the subject or theme is prescribed from the outside, by something beyond your experience and your own truths and passions. And so you can see that for me, all this is difficult and complicated. And in addition to all the stuff about trying to enlarge the soul, and trying to meet the immediate needs of the reader, there is a whole other element which we’d better not forget, and that is that a book has to be a pleasure to read. If a book isn’t first of all a pleasure, then it can’t do any good no matter how literary it may be or how useful to present needs, because nobody will read it.

Given all these demands, it’s a wonder anyone ever undertakes the writing of fiction at all, at least fiction for children. It may in fact be impossible to write a book for children which meet all three of these requirements. It may be impossible to enlarge the soul, meet present and specific needs, and please the reader all at the same time.

In my own case, there is no way to meet with any honesty the present and specific needs of those children referred to by the young woman at the Simmons conference and by Mark Jonathan Harris. I don’t avoid dealing with them because there are no easy solutions. I avoid them because I don’t know, first-hand, anything about them. On a scale of one-to-ten, I am a five. I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never been really poor, either. The only homelessness 1 know anything about is the kind you experience in moving, when you’ve left the old place but are not yet installed in the new. The only drug I’ve ever struggled with is nicotine. And I’ve never gone hungry.

There are thousands and thousands of people just like me. But just because we are fives, it doesn’t follow that we are innocent lambs, untouched by life. And it doesn’t mean that we are numb. We may fall somewhere between the Bronte sisters and Ernest Hemingway in terms of experience of the world, but we are still human. And so, in direct proportion to how long we’ve been around – well, if you’ve ever moved, you know how the moving companies rate your furniture on their work sheets before they put it into the van; “Chipped, scratched, marred.” And I’m sure we would all like to think that we have learned maybe not a lot, but something.

Here is one thing I’ve learned: My grandson, at fifteen months, brings out in me feelings I was too young and too busy to face with my own children when they were his age. His beauty is humbling; his trustingness, his vulnerability, his very littleness – these things are sometimes almost more than I can bear. Because I know, now, what I didn’t really know with my own children: no power on earth can protect him from life. No matter what is done for him, no matter how much he is loved, and educated, and supplied with books and music and attention to the needs of his soul and his body, he is doomed, simply because he is human, to suffer loneliness, disappointment, anger, despair, confusion, and pain. I yearn to protect him, but I know that protection is impossible.

He will share these common human woes with every other child in the world, to a greater or lesser degree, because all are human. But fortunately this is not all he will share. He will also share common human joys. For there is joy around, always. It is a blighted life indeed which has never known a joy of any kind, and books are not for lives like that. Those lives need a kind of care and attention no writer of fiction can provide, however well-intentioned.

So I think a work of fiction, for children especially, needs to present life as it really is: a mixture of joy and sorrow, of the solvable and the unsolvable, of the simple and the complicated. I hope my grandchild will be a reader and that he will learn something about the contradictions of life from books before he is thrust out to learn the same thing firsthand.

Thinking about all this, however, brought me no closer to defining the purpose of literature or even what literature is. In desperation, I finally said to my husband – to whom I don’t like to admit I am stumped – “Sam,” I said, “what is the purpose of literature?” He looked surprised by the question. “Literature has hundreds of purposes,” he said. And he should know. He has a PhD in it.

This was plenty discouraging. It threw me right back onto my own recognizance. Once there, I had to admit that what I used to think the definition of literature was, is plain and simple twaddle. I used to think that literature was the top layer of fiction – the layer that was going to last, or already had lasted, for generations. Up in that layer was The Odyssey and War and Peace and The Golden Bowl and Dombey and Son and – well, you get the gist. I used think that all writers should strive to create what I was calling literature because everything else was temporary, if not downright trashy. I was wrong. Literature is simply fiction, some good, some not so good, depending on who’s doing the choosing, and – it has hundreds of purposes.

It’s twaddle to say that writers should sit down and try deliberately to create work of lasting value, and that, by so trying, they should avoid dealing with the social problems of the moment because if they do, their work is doomed to eventual obscurity. If there’s anything to be learned in our present-day world, it’s that “lasting value” is a term of dubious significance. I’ve still got my mother’s old metal kitchen grater. It has four sides and a handle on top, and you can grate cheese and slice cucumbers with it, and one side has large perforations with such wickedly sharp edges that it looks like a medieval instrument of torture. I don’t know what that side is for. My mother probably got this tool when she was married in 1928, so it’s 61 years old and still going strong. It has survived my mother, and it will survive me. That’s lasting value for you. It is still possible to create kitchen tools of lasting value, but nobody, least of all me, can say what will make a work of fiction survive. And even if we could, I defy any writer to create, by an act of will, a work with any built-in guarantee. As a motive for writing, that would be arrogant nonsense. The ages will decide what lasts, not the writer.

So – literature has hundreds of purposes and I for one no longer care. But one question remains: Do we, as writers for children, really have any special responsibility? We do. We have a responsibility to do the very best work we’re capable of. And I still think that means we should each stick to what we know, and do what we do best. Some of us will write movingly and effectively about the current societal problems of children and may be able to bring comfort to those children if only by showing them they are not alone. Some of us will write funny books, light-hearted books, and thank goodness for them! Some of us will write about ideas and snippets of philosophy we find puzzling and interesting. Some of us will write about sports, or the solving of cops-and-robbers mysteries, or aliens from outer space, or dinosaurs. All of it will be literature, all fiction. All will serve one purpose or another. Some will be good, some not so good, again depending on who’s doing the choosing. But, for pity’s sake, let us hope that these books will first and foremost bring pleasure to their readers, regardless of which of the hundreds of purposes they serve, because otherwise it won’t matter what they’re about, or whether they’re good or not so good, and it won’t matter whether a given writer spent ten weeks or ten years writing one of them because no child will bother to read them. And if a child is forced to read one in school, he will forget it as quickly as possible afterwards.

Maybe, after all, there is one single purpose for literature – one foremost purpose, anyway. Maybe the giving of pleasure is the purpose. I find I could care about that. The purpose of literature is to give pleasure to the reader. I will leave it to somebody else to define what pleasure is. It could be a topic for some other paper: what is the purpose of pleasure? I hope nobody will ask me to deal with it.

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What Literature Can Teach Us

Communication and research skills—and how to be a better human being

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Literature is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from the Latin word  literature  meaning "writing formed with letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative imagination, including poetry, drama , fiction , nonfiction , and in some instances, journalism , and song. 

What Is Literature?

Simply put, literature represents the culture and tradition of a language or a people. The concept is difficult to precisely define, though many have tried; it's clear that the accepted definition of literature is constantly changing and evolving.

For many, the word literature suggests a higher art form; merely putting words on a page doesn't necessarily equate to creating literature. A canon is the accepted body of works for a given author. Some works of literature are considered canonical, that is, culturally representative of a particular genre (poetry, prose, or drama).

Literary Fiction vs. Genre Fiction

Some definitions also separate literary fiction from so-called "genre fiction," which includes types such as mystery, science fiction, western, romance, thriller, and horror. Think mass-market paperback.

Genre fiction typically does not have as much character development as literary fiction and is read for entertainment, escapism, and plot, whereas literary fiction explores themes common to the human condition and uses symbolism and other literary devices to convey the author's viewpoint on his or her chosen themes. Literary fiction involves getting into the minds of the characters (or at least the protagonist) and experiencing their relationships with others. The protagonist typically comes to a realization or changes in some way during the course of a literary novel.

(The difference in type does not mean that literary writers are better than genre fiction writers, just that they operate differently.)

Why Is Literature Important?

Works of literature, at their best, provide a kind of blueprint of human society. From the writings of ancient civilizations such as Egypt and China to Greek philosophy and poetry, from the epics of Homer to the plays of William Shakespeare, from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte to Maya Angelou , works of literature give insight and context to all the world's societies. In this way, literature is more than just a historical or cultural artifact; it can serve as an introduction to a new world of experience.

But what we consider to be literature can vary from one generation to the next. For instance, Herman Melville's 1851 novel " Moby Dick "   was considered a failure by contemporary reviewers. However, it has since been recognized as a masterpiece and is frequently cited as one of the best works of Western literature for its thematic complexity and use of symbolism. By reading "Moby Dick" in the present day, we can gain a fuller understanding of literary traditions in Melville's time. 

Debating Literature 

Ultimately, we may discover meaning in literature by looking at what the author writes or says and how he or she says it. We may interpret and debate an author's message by examining the words he or she chooses in a given novel or work or observing which character or voice serves as the connection to the reader.

In academia, this decoding of the text is often carried out through the use of  literary theory using a mythological, sociological, psychological, historical, or other approaches to better understand the context and depth of a work.

Whatever critical paradigm we use to discuss and analyze it, literature is important to us because it speaks to us, it is universal, and it affects us on a deeply personal level. 

School Skills

Students who study literature and read for pleasure have a higher vocabulary, better reading comprehension, and better communication skills, such as writing ability. Communication skills affect people in every area of their lives, from navigating interpersonal relationships to participating in meetings in the workplace to drafting intraoffice memos or reports.

When students analyze literature, they learn to identify cause and effect and are applying critical thinking skills. Without realizing it, they examine the characters psychologically or sociologically. They identify the characters' motivations for their actions and see through those actions to any ulterior motives.

When planning an essay on a work of literature, students use problem-solving skills to come up with a thesis and follow through on compiling their paper. It takes research skills to dig up evidence for their thesis from the text and scholarly criticism, and it takes organizational skills to present their argument in a coherent, cohesive manner.

Empathy and Other Emotions

Some studies say that people who read literature have more empathy for others, as literature puts the reader into another person's shoes. Having empathy for others leads people to socialize more effectively, solve conflicts peacefully, collaborate better in the workplace, behave morally, and possibly even become involved in making their community a better place.

Other studies note a correlation between readers and empathy but do not find causation . Either way, studies back the need for strong English programs in schools, especially as people spend more and more time looking at screens rather than books.

Along with empathy for others, readers can feel a greater connection to humanity and less isolated. Students who read literature can find solace as they realize that others have gone through the same things that they are experiencing or have experienced. This can be a catharsis and relief to them if they feel burdened or alone in their troubles.

Quotes About Literature

Here are some quotes about literature from literature giants themselves.

• Robert Louis Stevenson : "The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish."
• Jane Austen, "Northanger Abbey" : "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
• William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" : “I’ll call for pen and ink and write my mind.”
• A List of Every Nobel Prize Winner in English Literature
• What Is The Speech Act Theory: Definition and Examples
• What Is a Novel? Definition and Characteristics
• Are Literature and Fiction the Same?
• Literature Quotes and Sayings
• Stylistics and Elements of Style in Literature
• What Is the Canon in Literature?
• Every Character in Moby Dick
• Literature Definitions: What Makes a Book a Classic?
• 5 Classic Novels Everyone Should Read
• literary present (verbs)
• What's the Difference Between Classical and Classic Literature?
• The Basic Characteristics of Effective Writing
• How to Identify the Theme in a Literary Work
• 5 Novel Setting Maps for Classic American Literature
• Why We Don't Read

Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity

(12 reviews)

Theodore L. Steinberg, SUNY Fredonia

Copyright Year: 2014

ISBN 13: 9781942341031

Publisher: Open SUNY

Language: English

Formats Available

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Reviewed by Danielle DeRise, Lecturer, James Madison University on 11/21/21

As other reviewers have noted, this category is hard to evaluate for this text. Steinberg sets out to accomplish a specific purpose—to encourage appreciation of literature—and does so with a finite set of texts that he has personally curated as... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

As other reviewers have noted, this category is hard to evaluate for this text. Steinberg sets out to accomplish a specific purpose—to encourage appreciation of literature—and does so with a finite set of texts that he has personally curated as examples of great works that deserve our cultural attention. In this way, the text is successful in achieving the author’s vision: presenting his unique interpretations of canonical works. However, it is not “comprehensive,” though the definition of that term is highly subjective in the humanities. It’s not even unanimous that “comprehensiveness” would be a valued trait for a text in this discipline. However, I do think the book would have benefited from clearly articulated rationale for why these works were chosen over others (something more concrete than being the author’s personal favorites). It might have helped, even, had the author been a bit more explicit about connections among the texts; in that way, then, he could have achieved a certain comprehensiveness in his presentation of literature dealing with some theme still relevant in today’s society.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The author has considerable knowledge about a wide range of literary and historical periods; as such, the content is accurate and rich with detail. I wondered about his tendency to avoid citing other literary criticism. Occasionally, a theorist (e.g. Weil) was mentioned, but usually only so the author could dispel that scholar’s interpretation and offer his own. It’s obvious Steinberg has the expertise to propose his own analysis or challenge that of other scholars, but the way in which he did so was a bit didactic, at times, rather than inclusive.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

The chosen primary texts are timeless, as is the need for students to appreciate great works of literature within a larger context of the human experience. Therefore, much of this content is unlikely to go out of date in any problematic manner. The occasional anecdote—such as visiting a bookstore in an indoor mall—may be somewhat mysterious to students born after a certain date, though even those might retain charming appeal as artifacts of a human’s experience at the time of writing this book. However, in the micro-focus on close reading, an opportunity to make larger connections seems to have been missed. Students who don’t know why they’re supposed to love literature but who are ultimately open to the possibility would benefit from concrete examples: how does Virgil’s veiled critique of the empire resemble political discontent today? What about those “rebellious, rock-throwing mobs?” Does that remind students of anything they are seeing now? How might the struggles of George Eliot to be recognized as a reputable female author be similar to (or different from) the challenges faced by women in the corporate world today?

Clarity rating: 5

The prose is accessible, but probably more to an audience of literature professors than to undergraduate students. I see this text having been written for an audience of novice literature instructors open to hearing how they might cultivate approaches or design their syllabi. Some reviewers mentioned, and I agree, that the text might also be appreciated by adult students, i.e. learners who might have “missed” or underappreciated these classics the first time around. It’s harder to imagine this prose style “landing” with traditional undergraduate students, particularly those who might be enrolled in a humanities course to fulfill a general education requirement.

Consistency rating: 5

Late in the introduction, the author identifies his purpose: to demystify some of his favorite literary works. It is clear in every chapter that this is the spirit with which his prose is written and the primary texts are treated. Additionally, Steinberg relies on his considerable expertise to augment the literary interpretations with tidbits of biography or cultural context that would be useful additions to a humanities course. Thanks to his abundant knowledge, he successfully accomplishes these enhancements for every literary work and author in about equal measure.

Modularity rating: 4

This text seems most useful for its parts, so in one way, it is portable. An instructor could assign one chapter (or part of a chapter) in companion with the relevant primary text. On the other hand, Steinberg is self-referential—with many nods to “I’ll cover this later,” or “as we will see” (e.g. in the Austen chapter but without a hyperlink to the Eliot chapter). Consequently, aligning specific sections to one’s own course might require considerable effort in terms of explanation and presentation to students. Also, since the chapters are long, it seems they would be most appropriate broken into sections—to clarify a particularly opaque passage of The Iliad, for example. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine today’s student managing the workload of a demanding primary text, Steinberg’s supplement, and any scholarly criticism necessary to situate the work in contemporary discussions of race, gender, class, or other relevant theoretical frameworks.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 3

From chapter to chapter, there is a logical and clear flow. However, headings, titles, and more concise transitions would have helped with readability in the chapters. A paragraph forecasting the chapter’s goals and its arrangement would have allowed readers to better anticipate the flow of content. In its current presentation, the chapters seem to loosely bounce from biography to summary to interpretation. One specific example is the Austen chapter, which would have benefited from a short paragraph—set apart from the biographical or historical content—indicating that two novels would be explicated. More information about why those were the two novels selected, and what the subsequent interpretations would cover, would have been illuminating.

Interface rating: 4

Although readers can easily navigate back and forth between chapters with no distractions or broken links, the presentation feels a bit plain. Some readers will appreciate the lack of bells and whistles, as the straightforward presentation is reminiscent of print books. On the other hand, I anticipate students—particularly first-year undergraduates—benefiting from more “clickability,” such as a division of the long chapters into shorter modules with headings, bolded titles, larger font, and other small formatting changes to enhance the visual presentation.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

The text is polished and mostly free of grammatical, punctuation, or other mechanical errors. Apart from a few parenthetical asides that might have been removed for brevity, the book is nicely edited.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

I share the view of some previous reviewers, of this book serving as a supplement to one or more primary texts taught in the class. If used in this way, then the lack of non-Western/non-white/non-male authors would not be as noticeable. However, if it was going to be used from cover to cover, it would benefit from an update to include more diversity of authors.

When I was teaching in an adult continuing education program, I would have found this text useful. Those students would have enjoyed Steinberg’s passion for the literature and his anecdotal style of close reading. However, I don’t know that I’d use it with traditional, 100 or 200-level undergraduates, who would likely find it cumbersome to read these lengthy chapters in addition to the primary texts. Moreover, since I emphasize theoretical frameworks that delve into conversations about culture, race, gender, and class, I’d have a hard time fitting in another lengthy assignment, especially one this focused on close reading.

Reviewed by Jessica Hall, Adjunct Instructor , East Tennessee State University on 4/21/19

This text isn't comprehensive in the sense we usually apply to textbooks for literature courses, but as the author notes in his introduction, that isn't the point. It's a very specific overview of selected texts that are commonly taught in various... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

This text isn't comprehensive in the sense we usually apply to textbooks for literature courses, but as the author notes in his introduction, that isn't the point. It's a very specific overview of selected texts that are commonly taught in various survey courses, and as a result would be better in a supplementary reading function. The subjects that are covered, however, are covered with an appropriate level of detail for undergrad courses.

There is no index or glossary.

The content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The texts that the author has chosen to cover are timeless and he has approached them from a relevant twenty-first century perspective. Literary analysis is forever evolving, so relevance is always a tricky question in our discipline, but I would have no problem giving these essays to my students without many caveats (as I am sometimes obliged to do with supplementary analysis).

This textbook is extremely clear and approachable for students (another point in its favor over much critical analysis).

The text does what the author's introduction states it will do, and all of the chapters are consistently on theme and about the same length.

Because the text deals with ten specific texts mostly separately (the Odyssey and the Aeneid are combined) in addition to a general introduction, it would be very easy to pick and choose selections to assign to students. Because it seems designed to be used as supplementary reading, the chapters are probably a bit longer than I would expect students to read with regularity in addition to the primary texts they are assigned, however.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The chapters are clearly organized by chronology (date of primary text).

Interface rating: 5

The interface is clean and easy to navigate -- organized very much liked a traditional textbook.

There were no errors that I noticed.

The text is certainly not offensive in any way, but falters on the point of diversity. Of the nine authors considered, only two are women, and George Eliot is the most recent. There are no authors of color and all the authors are Western.

I would use this textbook as supplementary critical reading in survey courses, but I would be much more likely to do so if the works considered in the text were ones I assigned frequently. Unfortunately novels like Middlemarch or Bleak House aren't an option in survey courses. I do, however, particularly like the introduction to the textbook (especially the sections on the enjoyment of literature and the misconceptions about it) and would consider assigned portion of it independent of the rest of the textbook in my intro to literature course.

Reviewed by Catherine Pritchard Childress, Adjunct Professor , East Tennessee State University on 4/15/19

While this text has much to offer when considering specific pieces of literature, I wouldn't label it comprehensive. Further, apart from a Works Cited page, the author offers no glossary, index, or notes section. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

While this text has much to offer when considering specific pieces of literature, I wouldn't label it comprehensive. Further, apart from a Works Cited page, the author offers no glossary, index, or notes section.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The author's treatment of his chosen novels, plays, and poems is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The approaches to reading, understanding, and engaging with literature that are presented in this text are timeless, in my opinion. The author provides students with ways of understanding difficult text that are different from traditional approaches.

Absolutely--the text is casual and accessible in its approach--a style that I imagine would be very appealing to students.

Each chapter is uniform in style and approach.

Modularity rating: 5

This text can only be used if assigned in smaller sections as it only covers a few novels, plays, and poems.

The relevant text is clearly stated in each chapter's title. The organization is logical, clear, and direct.

I have no problem navigating through this book. It is relatively free of non-textual material, so that isn't an issue here.

I did not discover any glaring grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 1

This book is very limited in scope. Of the ten chapters (and their corresponding authors) only two are female. No contemporary authors (of color or otherwise) are included in this book. Since this text isn't specific to a certain time period, I think this is a shortcoming on the author's part. A textbook with this wide scope could easily include a more representative group.

While I might find this text useful as supplemental reading for students, or even a secondary source for instructors, I don't find it practical for the survey courses I teach. In fact, in my experience, many of the novels are only taught at the graduate level. I can't know the author's intent, but the authors and works he includes don't lend themselves to use in any specific course. The stated goal is achieved--he does present a variety of ways for students to think about literature, but having this as the single text for any particular course seems unlikely. I would like to have seen works that most often appear in traditional anthologies, or on traditional reading list. For example, students might be better served by a discussion of Dickens' Great Expectations rather than Bleak House. Definitely a book to which I will return for my own planning, though.

Reviewed by John Brinegar, Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University on 12/5/16

Steinberg's book is comprehensive in the sense that it articulates an approach toward reading and interpreting literature and then provides several examples of that approach in action; in other words, it sets out a project and then fulfills it. No... read more

Steinberg's book is comprehensive in the sense that it articulates an approach toward reading and interpreting literature and then provides several examples of that approach in action; in other words, it sets out a project and then fulfills it. No English literature textbook with as broad an aim as this one can be comprehensive in the sense that it discusses all aspects of its subject matter. A textbook can provide an appropriate representative sample of its subject matter, however, and this is where Steinberg's book can be criticized. As other reviewers have noted, the texts that Steinberg discusses are either classical literature (the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid) or British and all written before the twentieth century, and Jane Austen and George Eliot are the only female authors included. Even granting Steinberg's desire to discuss only time-tested works, the book seems poorer for including neither any American literature (and some canonical writer like Melville or Hawthorne would surely fit Steinberg's project) nor any work by an author of color. Nonetheless, Steinberg covers his chosen ground quite thoroughly.

In a field such as literary studies, it is somewhat difficult to define "accuracy"; literary interpretation is, after all, always in some degree subjective. Steinberg is as accurate as a literary critic can be expected to be: I found no incorrect quotations of literature or of critics in his book, and he hews close to prevailing strands of literary interpretation.

Steinberg's readings of individual texts, and especially his introduction on how to read and to teach literature, will remain relevant for a long time. As time passes, they will move in and out of agreement with the shifting currents of academic theories of literary interpretation, but they will be of some value as long as the texts they discuss are still read. Steinberg's introduction, emphasizing as it does close reading and attention to the words on the page, would be of value even if no one read the texts he discusses; the skills he champions are necessary prolegomena to any more specific theoretical approach. The book is most relevant to students beginning college-level study of literature, whether they are English majors or not, as it clearly and engagingly presents a theory of how to read and enjoy literature. The content is general enough (and the writing style encouraging enough) not to put off students for whom interpreting literature is not a prime interest, yet still contains enough specifics to be of use to students encountering the texts for the first time. As other reviewers have noted, the book would also be of great relevance to adult learners seeking a helpful guide to classic literature. Students encountering these texts for a second time, or in a more intensive setting (say, a seminar on Jane Austen) would likely find the book less relevant to their interpretive needs.

Steinberg writes with refreshing clarity: his prose is accessible and engaging, and he makes no attempt to sound dauntingly intellectual.

The book is certainly internally consistent; as I have already noted, it sets out a general method of reading which it then applies to various specific works. In all cases, the specific interpretations follow the general method. To the extent that Steinberg uses specific literary terminology, he is consistent in its use; however, the book is fairly free of jargon.

This book is highly modular; in fact, it is much more likely that an instructor would use part of it in a course than all of it. The introduction could be used with profit in any introduction to literary analysis: I will use it in my Introduction to the English Major course, and it would even be of use as introductory reading for a general education literature course. The chapters on individual works would be useful auxiliary readings for anyone encountering these texts for the first time, and they are self-contained enough that they can easily be read and understood in isolation.

As I have already noted, the book moves from general method to specific application. The discussions of specific works are arranged in chronological order, and when more than one text is discussed in a chapter (as in Chapter Three, which discusses the Odyssey and the Aeneid) there are clear links of subject and themes which bind the texts together. Even though the book is quite modular, the chapters flow easily from one into the next, and reading the book straight through is a pleasant experience.

This book is freer of typographical errors than many printed books are. There are no interface issues with the PDF, which I have read all of; a quick look at the ePub text does not reveal any issues either.

As with the typography, the grammar is excellent.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

The cultural relevance of Steinberg's text is problematic. While his overall premise (that reading literature should be enjoyable, and that close reading techniques can help make it so) is neither insensitive nor offensive, his choice of literary examples could be considered so. As mentioned earlier, the texts discussed are all either classical or British and all written before 1873. In addition, only two female writers are included, and no writers of color are included at all: this gives a narrower view of English literature than is necessary or, perhaps, justified. The chief problem, in my view, is that the selection of texts implies that, while reading literature should yield enjoyment, only the works of white British authors are really capable of doing so. Steinberg certainly does not say this, and I am sure he does not think it either; however, a wider variety of authors would help to show the breadth of enjoyment that literature can offer.

This is a well-written and engaging book that will be of real use to students embarking on the project of reading and interpreting literature. While not suited (nor intended) for use as a course textbook, it presents a valuable introduction to close reading and enlightening readings of various canonical literary texts.

Reviewed by Catherine Loomis, Professor of English and Women's Studies, University of New Orleans on 12/5/16

The author does not claim the book is comprehensive, and in fact he draws attention to the limits of its chapter topics. The book is comprehensive in the sense that it marshals many reasons to study literature, but the author chooses to focus on... read more

The author does not claim the book is comprehensive, and in fact he draws attention to the limits of its chapter topics. The book is comprehensive in the sense that it marshals many reasons to study literature, but the author chooses to focus on a few favorite works to illustrate those reasons. There is evidence that the author's knowledge of the field is comprehensive, but the book itself encourages readers to make their own efforts to garner comprehensive knowledge of English literature.

The author is direct and clear about his biases toward certain periods, genres, and authors, and justifies those biases. There are several typos in the book, some of them problematic. I found the plot summaries and analyses to be accurate and error-free. You might want to be a little kinder to shepherds on page 67 (Shakespeare's Corin is actually a very wise man). You might want to give bibliomancy a name on page 68.

The author discusses several canonical works that we will continue to teach for several hundred years, but his anecdotes and analogies will become obsolete more quickly. The dated material will be easy to identify and replace; the surveys of critical responses to the works can be easily supplemented as new critical studies become available.

The text seems aimed at advanced placement high school students, college students who are not majoring in English but are taking a literature class, and adult learners who would like to know more about English literature. This audience will have no trouble understanding the author's clear and logical prose. Definitions are deftly and consistently offered, and there is no lit-crit jargon used.

The book's purpose is clear from the introduction forward, and the author's argument about the value of literature develops clearly and logically with each chapter. There is a consistent habit of using well-chosen examples, and a sensible and repeated structure in each chapter, making it possible for students to read the chapters over the course of the semester without losing sight of the pattern.

The chapters can easily be read individually and in any order, but there is a welcome tendency to recall earlier chapters in brief, relevant ways.

The works are organized chronologically, and the author draws attention to artistic and technical developments that demonstrate how the later works evolve from the earlier ones.

No noticeable distractions. The layout, in fact, is quite nicely done.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

There are errors, although they seem inadvertent. On page 20, in line 11 of the quoted poem, "wen" should be "went." On page 82, the number of Shakespeare's sonnets is incorrect: it's 154. On page 84, ste-dame should be step-dame, and three-no should be three-note. There is a lay/lie error on page 95. On page 119, beards should not be capitalized. On page 131, elast should be least. One page 132, I'the storm should be i' the storm (lower case i). The opening sentence of Chapter 6 should end with a question mark. On page 150 in the last paragraph, I think "to" should be "too," but I may be misreading the sentence. On page 157, appear should be appeal. On page 193, paragraph 2, should "there" be "these"? In the chapter on _Middlemarch_, George Eliot's real name should be spelled correctly throughout: it's Mary Ann Evans. On page 224, the title of _The Iliad_ is inconsistently italicized.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This book is of relevance to students of the humanities. It covers a period of western history when most writers were male and white, but the author takes the time to explain why this is so and to offer ways in to these poems, plays, and novels for all readers.

The anecdotes become a bit wearing by the middle of the text. The analogies are good, and the gentle, positive tone will reassure readers who are new to literature. The frequent demonstrations of how to do a close reading provide a valuable model for readers, and the thoughtful efforts to link the works through cross-references make the book a coherent study. The conversational tone and the author's obvious love of the material make this an accessible, readable text for non-specialist audiences.

Reviewed by Peter Olson, Lecturer, UW-Stout on 8/21/16

Theodore L. Steinberg’s /Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity/ (Open SUNY Textbooks 2013), attempts to synthesize a discourse on the humanities and survey of well-known Western literary examples from Homer’s /The Iliad/ to George Eliot’s... read more

Theodore L. Steinberg’s /Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity/ (Open SUNY Textbooks 2013), attempts to synthesize a discourse on the humanities and survey of well-known Western literary examples from Homer’s /The Iliad/ to George Eliot’s /Middlemarch/. There are ten chapters in all, with nine devoted to literary discussions of specific literary works. Except for chapter 3, which contrasts Homer’s /The Odyssey/ and Virgil’s /The Aeneid/; due to the historical relatedness of the two works, each chapter discusses a single author in chronological order. Following two chapters on Homer and Virgil, Steinberg offers two chapters on English Renaissance literary works by Sir Philip Sidney (/Astrophel/ and /Stella/) and Shakespeare (/As You Like It/ and /Antony and Cleopatra/), and two chapters on Augustan authors, Alexander Pope (“The Rape of the Lock”) and Henry Fielding (/Joseph Andrews/). The last three chapters offer discussions of Jane Austen (/Sense and Sensibility/ and /Pride and Prejudice/), Charles Dickens (/Bleak House/), and George Eliot’s /Middlemarch/.

Steinberg’s “Introduction” (chapter 1) situates his study of these specific authors by foregrounding his concern for teaching literature within the purview of the humanities, which he recognizes as challenged by the emphasis in education on STEM and socioeconomics that are increasingly instrumental in character. He traces the humanities to classical beginnings, to the Renaissance, and to the Enlightenment. He briefly reminds readers that part of the task of the humanities is to recognize the ironic lack of inclusiveness in historical concepts of the Enlightenment. He recognizes that the critique of the Enlightenment is implicit in the inherently skeptical nature of literature. The reading of literature then, Steinberg suggests, becomes a central act of gaining a measure of critical autonomy. Steinberg is aware, of course, that the place of reading literature in society has changed, though he doesn’t delve into the cultural reasons for this issue deeply. A few of the reasons for a decline in literary interest, he offers, ironically involve commercial and technological changes that are themselves part of the impetus for open textbooks. The open text seems to provide a space for a renewal of literary study for the contemporary reader. In this case, one finds a text that demonstrates an interdisciplinary survey of literature that makes a case for humanistic study.

In his chapter on Shakespeare (chapter 5), for example, Steinberg questions how and why Shakespeare is taught, how Shakespeare might be seen as an interdisciplinary study across various departments in order to rethink the way Shakespeare’s poems and dramatic plays have been institutionalized. This cross-disciplinary concern brings in historical data about political history, poetics, linguistics and dialect, dramatic theory, and staging design. In Steinberg’s discussion of Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” the frame of the discussion seeks to contextualize the text by close reading Pope’s discourse in Augustan rhetoric. In the chapter on Fielding, Steinberg shows how the emergence of the genre of the novel can be seen in the context of an emerging bourgeois literacy allusively familiar with a wide range of literature. Steinberg reminds us that the genre of the novel must be understood in the aesthetic context that is marked by literary distinctions between “romance” and the novel, and further in terms of the various perspectives of comedy that date to classical texts.

Steinberg gives a note on citations. Citations of verse are marked by line number. Less convenient, prose citations refer to chapter number. Readers of primary texts, say of Dickens or Austen, will need to flip pages. The Selected Bibliography lists recommended translations of Homer and Virgil. Readers will have to decide upon editions of the other authors collected in Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity. Steinberg stresses the interpretive flexibility of literary study and the need for well-supported critical readings.

Steinberg’s key point is that he sees literature as essential to an understanding of the humanities. Since his subject matter in chapters 2-10 pertains to literary efforts spanning two millennia it would appear that this material has survived the intellectual history throughout the development of the liberal arts. Readers should bear in mind that Steinberg’s literary discussions demonstrate his thesis about the value of literature for the humanities, and that he refers to primary texts that readers will acquire separately. One might interpret that question of relevance and longevity, a question related to the survival of canonical literature, in terms of the literary-critical field. The book tangentially or indirectly implies developments in literary criticism, but the text is situated in the appreciation of canonical literature rather than in opening questions of ideology and a metacritique of the canon itself.

The text is lucid and perspicuous. Steinberg’s prose is a pleasure to read and the book seems to be targeted to undergraduates, teachers, and adult life-long learners. Steinberg write that “authors want to communicate to their readers, so they are not likely to hide or disguise what they are saying, but reading literature also requires some training and some practice. Good writers use language very carefully, and readers must learn how to be sensitive to that language…” (6-7). This point represents Steinberg’s own values for writing and shows his assumption that reading is interactive and requires a transaction. If writing must be clear, which this book is, there is also a need for readers to meet the writing in the space of the text.

Consistency rating: 4

Steinberg’s title alludes to the binary nature of his purpose: to rhetorically appeal to readers about the value of literature and to exemplify his approach to literary study. Teachers considering this text will notice that Steinberg’s mode of literary explication and exegesis may be at once consistent with his philosophy of the humanities and at the same time divergent from literary-critical foci they wish to foreground.

Steinberg’s text seems most interesting as a unified demonstration of his approach to literary study as part of an overall view of teaching in the humanities. On the other hand, the parts of the text—the introduction on the value and aesthetics of literature, for example, or the various chapters on particular authors and works—may conceivably be used separately as modules in readings courses, or as supporting articles in literary surveys. Again, the reading level is clear enough for undergraduate general education courses.

Following the front matter and the table of contents, the book is divided between an introduction that presents a thesis advocating literary study as central to the humanities, and situates the analytical chapters, which comprise 90% of the book, such that overall the text demonstrates an approach to literary analysis workable for general readers.

The text I have reviewed is offered as a PDF file or and ePub file.

The text’s language and presentation is immaculate.

The text’s central claim that literary study is culturally relevant to the humanities in general (or the liberal arts) could be qualified by reminding readers that the texts under discussion are canonical texts of Western literature. In the Introduction Steinberg reminds us that interpretation is perspectival and the history of Western literary development traces an increasing recognition of class, gender, and ethnic differences. Some of these issues reappear in individual chapters on specific authors and texts, especially chapters on Pope, Austen, and Eliot, which consider the gender roles of readers of literature. Steinberg also delves into aspects of social class in several chapters: the role of theater in Shakespeare’s London, for example, or the provincial social world of Eliot’s /Middlemarch/.

Steinberg’s larger purpose is to offer a model for teaching and learning literature by grounding the centrality of literary study in a contemporary sense of the (potential loss of) value of the humanities. Part of Steinberg’s effort is to reconnect readers with “Literature” and “Poetry.” Much of what motivates his book is that a public disconnected from literature and poetry becomes disconnected with humanity and the attendant interests in human rights, ethics, and civics. Part of his solution lies in the way we can rethink reading by stressing aesthetic enjoyment of texts, demystifying literature, allowing for a more openness to interpretation, and by conveying a deeper interest in literary language.

Reviewed by Zara Torlone, Professor of Classics, Miami University of Ohio on 8/21/16

At the time when study of the Humanities in general and literature in particular is under constant attack, this book pursues a noble goal of insisting that reading of literature is an important and necessary component of education. Since... read more

At the time when study of the Humanities in general and literature in particular is under constant attack, this book pursues a noble goal of insisting that reading of literature is an important and necessary component of education. Since Steinberg’s book argues that reader’s enjoyment is the main purpose of the study of literature, the concept of “comprehensiveness” does not seem to be an applicable criterion in evaluation of this book. Rather, from the onset of the book Steinberg aims to establish the artificiality of the long standing distinction between literature and fiction and to explain that, while literature always stands in need of interpretation, there are no hidden meanings in most works of literature so that anybody can enjoy reading. His primary audience seems to be readers beyond their college years, but even so, some chapters of the book can be used to introduce the inexperienced reader at college level to such complicated poetic works as the "Iliad" and the "Aeneid", teaching of which always presents a challenge in the classroom. Although in his theoretical part of the book Steinberg dwells very little on theoretical approaches to literature such as formalism or post-structuralism, he offers comprehensive and helpful readings of important canonical texts of the Western canon ranging from Homer to many examples taken from British literature. The choice of these texts for case studies is never fully explained and it can be argued that it is not broad enough (for example no American, French, German, or Russian texts are included, texts that are considered influential for the formation of the Western canon if one indeed accepts the existence of it). Instead, this textbook draws heavily on the examples from English literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the nature and the challenge of this kind of textbooks is that none of them can claim exhaustive approach: they are supposed only to whet the appetite of the reader and Steinberg’s book accomplishes that.

This book adequately addresses existing interpretations of the literary works chosen as its case studies. One might agree or disagree with certain close readings provided by Steinberg, but overall each case study covers the main questions arising in the classroom discussions for every literary work chosen. Steinberg does not reference any other secondary sources and because of that the reader does not see any other perspective but his. While it obviously limits his arguments, Steinberg provides convincing textual evidence from the primary sources which give the reader a taste of the literary work under discussion.

This book can be used as a valuable introductory textbook for students not majoring in humanities or for adult learners. Most similar commercial textbooks outlive their usefulness by trying to address the most prevalent theoretical approaches. This book aims to offer more inclusive and coherent introduction to the study of literature.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing of Steinberg’s book is transparent, crisp, and engaging. Since it targets a non-specialist reader, it avoids the obscure terms of literary criticism and it explains and unfolds definitions that a non-specialist reader might find difficult. I think, however, that some key terms of literary criticism can be introduced and used without confusing the reader.

Consistency rating: 3

The book is consistent when analyzing every work of literature chosen as a case study. At the center of every analysis is reader’s engagement and enjoyment as well as an accessible explanation of why this particular work of literature continues to attract readers’ interest and enjoys longevity. The book, however, avoids drawing any intertextual or philosophical conclusions thus making the discussions at times superficial and oversimplified. Some discussions also do not provide enough of a political context which in case, for example, of Vergil’s Aeneid is absolutely crucial for understanding the literary agenda of the author.

Modularity rating: 3

This book would be difficult to use in its entirety for any particular class, but the parts of it might be relevant to the contents of a specific syllabus, especially in foundation literature courses that aim to provide an understanding of literature in the form of a survey rather than address specific details.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The book does not follow a particular line of argument or theoretical framework adhering instead to explaining to the readers why a particular work of literature has value and provides pleasure. While this rather broad approach can be seen as a shortcoming of the book, it also provides easy transitions from chapter to chapter and engaging discussions free of tediousness.

The interface works fine. The chapter divisions are clear and helpful.

The text is well edited.

As I stated at the beginning of this review, this book is extremely timely because it insists that there is a reason why certain books of literature must be read even at the time when the attention of audiences is so thinly spread and targeted by numerous other distractions. The book makes a convincing argument that the aesthetic value of literary works that for hundreds of years constituted Western literary canon remains unchanged and that cultural literacy is not a thing of the past. While I always opt for diversity in choosing literary works in my own classes, I can see that Steinberg’s own choices of including certain works into this study and excluding others stem from his scholarly interests as much as from establishing cultural continuity.

In conclusion I wan to emphasize that I read Steinberg’s book with pleasure. I can also see how it can be used in the foundation classes which introduce students to conventions of literary criticism and basic concepts of writing a coherent literary analysis.

Reviewed by Scott Dionne, Instructor, Portland Community College on 8/21/16

For what it is, this book provides an excellent overview of literary studies as a discipline within the humanities. You can't fault the book for what it strives to do--to give students a kind of traditional sense of literary studies as a... read more

For what it is, this book provides an excellent overview of literary studies as a discipline within the humanities. You can't fault the book for what it strives to do--to give students a kind of traditional sense of literary studies as a humanistic profession. But as an American educator I find the omission of American authors a bit puzzling. (Doubly puzzling when the factor in that the author teaches at an American university!) The author surveys drama, poetry, and fiction--all either British or ancient Greek. But no American literature! The addition of at least work by an American--Saul Bellow, say, or Walt Whitman--would go far to offset the way in which literature is classified as essentially a British art.

The joyful explications of the literature are infectious. The author clearly enjoys critiquing literature, and it shows in every summary, paraphrase, and explication. There are a few problems with accuracy, though. One problem is the missing translation information for Homer's "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" when these works are cited. Both Robert Fagles's and Richard Lattimore's transltions appear on his bibliography for both "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey," but the in-text citations do not specify which translation is being cited. I would also like to see a footnoted book. I'm not accustomed to reading scholarly books on Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens et al sans footnotes. Most of this discussion is strictly focused on textual commentary, so no footnotes are needed. But it wouldn't have hurt to tether certain references to outside works via footnotes. On page 59, for example, the author cites a phrase of James Joyce's "Ulysses" : "mystery of paternity." The absence of a specific footnote doesn't do much harm, but the reader might be helped along by knowing that the reference to show actually appears in Chapter I of "Ulysses" titled Telemachus" and is, I think, found in Stephen's Ballad of the Joking Jesus scene.

This book explores the world of great literature, which is found in each and every century and does not have the same shelf life as the social sciences or the health fields. The author does a very good job, however, of occasionally reminding the reader of how these great literary works intersect our own lives in the 21st century. He mentions, for instance, the problems of film adaptation of Dickens's "Great Expectations." And he addresses the online Shakespeare deniers who contend that Shakespeare did not author the plays (although to be honest I would have preferred that this unsubstantiated argument not receive any stage time whatsoever in the book!). I also enjoyed how the author made the work accessible to a broad range of contemporary students.

The book is excellently written. I have no qualms in recommending the book on this point alone. Very readable. Even though I teach some of these works and am already quite familiar with the spectrum of critical approaches to them, I still found myself pulled into the book. The chapter on Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" is worth the price of admission. And I also enjoyed the chapter on Jane Austen,

The chapters do not have as strong of a parallelism as they could. Some of the chapters are on specific literary works, such as Chapter IX, which is on Dickens's "Bleak House." But two of the chapters--V & VIII--are on authors (Shakespeare and Jane Austen). We learn eventually that the Shakespeare chapter is actually on "as You Like It" and "Antony and Cleopatra." And the chapter titled "Jane Austen" is actually a comprehensive critical survey of all her fiction. Otherwise, the book is well thought out.

Each chapter is a stand alone work and can be used on its own. I will probably be using the chapters on Shakespeare, Dickens, and Austen in future literature classes. The author uses sub-headings in some chapters (quite a few in the opening chapters) and not in other chapters. Personally, I don't view modularity as being all that important in a work of literary studies, especially if the chapters are not overly long.

The book succeeds as a text meant for a student readership while being intellectually engaging for the teacher as well. It is easy to read, makes sense in most places, and subject matter is logically sequenced in chronological order. Perhaps one suggestion would be to include more textual citations. The analyses tend to be a bit anemic in textual citations. But then again, it's a matter of taste. I like literary criticism spiced up with a lot of quotations that serve to illustrate and substantiate the claims being made in the work.

The book is probably more "old school" than some open source books. But I like it this way.. What matters here is the lliterature, the analysis, the language style, the arguments, etc.

The book is well written. It could be published by a reputable literary press. I like the style, the voice, the diction, No problems here.

The book never slights anybody, As mentioned earlier, though, it is heavily weighted towards a British view of literature. Maybe a second edition of this book could include a couple chapters that could offset this a little bit. But then again, users of this book could just add their own chapters to it, I guess.

This book isn't so much a "textbook" that students work out of; it's a book meant to be read. I give the author a lot of credit for doing this. I will probably be using this book for this reason: it's a useful and engaging book to read rather than to use.

Reviewed by Zachary Hutchins, Assistant Professor of English, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

Theodore Steinberg has written a book that rejects “comprehensiveness” as a goal of introductory courses in literature or the humanities, so I’m not sure it’s fair to evaluate him using this particular criterion. What I mean to say is: whereas... read more

Theodore Steinberg has written a book that rejects “comprehensiveness” as a goal of introductory courses in literature or the humanities, so I’m not sure it’s fair to evaluate him using this particular criterion. What I mean to say is: whereas most “introduction to literature” textbooks will review a wide variety of approaches to literature without privileging one over another, Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity is a work of polemic that insists on the reader’s pleasure as the primary purpose of literary study and approaches the question of how to read from that perspective—subordinating the philosophical and political questions undergirding much of contemporary literary study and theory. Steinberg has no interest, it would seem, in approaching the question of how to read literature in a comprehensive fashion, systematically, and his audience seems to be “adult learners” in search of continuing education rather than a college freshman preparing for an introductory course offered by the English department or college teachers (the three different audiences he acknowledges in a prefatory note). But even if Steinberg has no interest in introducing students to formalism, post structuralism, or any of the other ideological lenses through which literature is so often read in the academy, his study is unnecessarily narrow in at least one other respect: after his opening chapter offers a theory of reading, Steinberg provides nine chapters delving into case studies of specific texts. He offers excellent close readings of canonical texts from The Iliad and The Odyssey to Bleak House and Middlemarch, but the vast majority of his examples are drawn from British literature. It would have been natural—and would have broadened the range of his readers’ conception of literary development and scope—if a few American texts (such as Moby-Dick and Uncle Tom’s Cabin) or, perhaps, other foundational pieces of world literature (the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, and Faustus, for example) had been the focus of chapters rather than so many examples from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. He references a wide array of texts but chooses to focus on a relatively narrow selection of books. To his credit, those books include a fair amount of generic diversity: works of poetry, novels, and drama.

Literary studies is not a field in which questions of accuracy often arise, but Steinberg’s work is certainly accurate in its presentation of facts and prevailing interpretive opinions.

Because Steinberg’s book seems aimed primarily at adult learners continuing their education after the formal opportunities of high school and college have passed, this book will continue to be a valuable learning resource long after the modish textbooks geared more pointedly toward college freshmen and sophomores entering a new disciplinary world have been replaced by newer offerings espousing the latest and greatest in literary theory. His readings of these classic texts will always be useful introductions for the general interest reader; they are accessible and insightful without aiming for anything like an exhaustive approach, jargon-free and well-written.

As noted immediately above, the writing is excellent and accessible. Because Steinberg writes for a non-specialist reader, he avoids technical terms and, when language unfamiliar to a general audience does crop up, a definition is sure to follow.

The book is certainly internally consistent; as noted above, it differs from other textbooks aimed primarily at college students, in that it eschews literary theory and takes the reader’s experience, his or her joy in the journey of reading, as the primary aim and purpose of study. Most other comparable textbooks emphasize the philosophical or political aims of literature, and so this volume may not be regarded as “consistent” with others in its class.

While I would not use this text in its entirety to teach a class introducing literary study to college students, each of the case studies is a valuable gateway for students approaching the text for the first time. The book’s modularity is, for that reason, one of its greatest strengths, allowing teachers to assign a relatively brief essay foregrounding significant themes without giving away the book’s ending.

Although I would have preferred (as noted above) a more varied selection of texts, the logic by which Steinberg selected his texts is completely understandable. Indeed, the transition from Iliad to Odyssey to Aeneid seems fairly inevitable and sets the stage for his later discussino of Alexander Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Transitions from chapter to chapter are well managed, and reading the book feels more like indulging in conversation with a well-read friend than following a particular line of argumentation.

No errors: the text is well edited.

At a time when the canon is being discarded as a relic of patriarchal values and Western cultural imperialism, Steinberg’s book—simply by virtue of the titles it chooses to focus on—offers an impassioned defense of the aesthetic value of books commonly identified as classics. His volume defends cultural literacy as a common good and implicitly asks readers in the academy to reconsider their relatively recent turn to texts defined by the diverse identities of their authors. I personally would have appreciated a chapter focusing on the Narrative of Frederick Douglass or a novel by Salman Rushdie, but Steinberg’s work is certainly a contribution to our ongoing debate over what (and who) is read in literature classrooms.

I want to stress that Steinberg's book is excellent at what it does--introducing canonical texts to adult learners. I'm simply not convinced that it should be thought of as a text for college freshmen and sophomores being introduced to disciplinary conventions and history.

Reviewed by Catherine Ratliff, Instructor, Colorado State University on 1/7/16

Steinberg's text offers students and teachers a specific range of material on key classic literary authors and texts with chapters focused on Homer, Sir Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles... read more

Steinberg's text offers students and teachers a specific range of material on key classic literary authors and texts with chapters focused on Homer, Sir Philip Sydney, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot. The Introduction makes a convincing argument for the value of studying literature as a human endeavor, as well as lays out what readers might expect from the textbook in terms of language, culture, and the enjoyment of canonically significant literary texts. Each chapter offers significant contextual information on the authors and texts of focus. Steinberg is also able to make literary texts that are often quite daunting for students, such as The Iliad, approachable and understandable. The chapter on Shakespeare, which Steinberg acknowledges was the cause of some trepidation for him as an author, provides an overview of The Bard’s oeuvre and dominant writing themes, which would be useful in a survey course or humanities based class; however, the chapter’s limitations are that it only goes into great detail on As You Like It and Antony and Cleopatra. Each chapter does include multiple and thorough textual examples, although Steinberg does suggest that the text is most useful as a supplement to readings of the full-texts in his analysis and not a replacement. This should be kept in mind when considering teaching plans, especially considering that Steinberg’s textbook is over two-hundred pages long and many of the works he examines are also lengthy. The most significant limitations of Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity are that female literary voices are under-represented (only two of the ten chapters directly examine women authors) and more contemporary texts are excluded (as George Eliot’s 1870s Middlemarch concludes the textbook). With this said though, Steinberg’s defines his scope as classic literature within the Introduction so the texts he selects for analysis are not unexpected and definitely fit his intended purpose.

The textbook provides accurate information in terms of literary analysis from Steinberg’s perspective and theoretical standpoint. Steinberg does not reference outside sources, other than to cite the primary texts he is working with, so all material in the textbook is solely from one perspective, which can present certain limitations in terms of teaching diverse readings. There are also some spots where more contextual information on the authors or texts included would be useful, especially for humanities based courses where students may not be familiar with less well-known authors such as Sidney or Eliot. Steinberg does, however, seem to consistently back up his arguments and analyses with convincing textual evidence and conscientious appraisals.

The textbook examines classic texts and authors, so its longevity and relevance are almost certainly assured for years to come. The relevance of this textbook is especially keenly geared toward introductory courses in literature or the humanities because it clearly assists students in grasping key elements of the included works through straightforward explanations. Also, Steinberg’s argument for the enjoyment of literature as a way to read history, cultures, and humanity in general is one that many in education will appreciate.

The text is written in crisp and clear language, which makes it particularly accessible for students that are not literature majors. Steinberg breaks down complex texts in easily understandable thematic and topical ways. He also provides clear character examinations to help guide readers. Each chapter is approximately twenty to thirty pages, which allow for steady pacing in reading assignments and teaching preparation. If students have read the texts included in this textbook they should have little to no problems following Steinberg’s chapters. Potential negatives in terms of clarity are that the chapter lengths might present some difficulties for 100-level students; however, the text’s readability is high and should help combat this issue. Also, more defined sections within each chapter would likely help with student accessibility of the concepts presented.

The book is consistent in its presentation of information, chapter arrangements, conceptual frameworks, and in pursuing the author’s goals of teaching the delights of classic literature.

The textbook is organized into chapters that focus on one specific author and related text. Assigning individual chapters seems most logical approach. The most useful modular aspect of this text is that individual chapters may be assigned without the need for students to read the entire book, thus making the textbook a helpful resource for specific needs of instructors that are not teaching all of the literary texts included.

There are clear chapter distinctions according to specific authors and chronology. The arrangement of information in each chapter is logical and well-progressed.

There are no interface issues to note.

The textbook seems free of grammar errors.

The texts and authors included in this textbook are considered to be classics of the literary canon, which work to ensure the cultural relevance of the book as a whole. There broad range of texts included in the book also allows instructors to teach a wide variety of literary periods from the Greeks to the nineteenth century. The cultural limitations of the textbook lie in the fact that a lack of more recent authors or literature might dissuade some students. In addition, the limited discussions of current literary studies “hot topics,” such as gender, race, economics, materiality, or cultural studies might also create difficulties in teaching this textbook in a course where these concepts are key components of the class.

Steinberg does important work here in examining classic literary texts and moving to make them enjoyable and accessible for today’s student. This book offers great potential in helping to bring conversations about the importance and pleasure of literature into discourse within humanities classes.

Reviewed by David Mount, Full-Time Instructor, Clackamas Community College on 1/7/16

The book is not at all comprehensive and doesn't set out to be. That's what makes it wonderful. It's a guided tour through some of Professor Steinberg's favorite works of literature, making the case along the way for the enjoyment of literature,... read more

The book is not at all comprehensive and doesn't set out to be. That's what makes it wonderful. It's a guided tour through some of Professor Steinberg's favorite works of literature, making the case along the way for the enjoyment of literature, for the value of reading, and the importance of the humanities: "I have chosen these particular works not because they are 'important' but because they are among my favorites and because I want to share my enjoyment of them with readers who might feel that one has to be a specialist to read them."

The works he chooses are discussed chronologically, starting with some classics--The Illiad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid--and then settling down in England for the rest of the book. It could be seen as arbitrary and/or too influenced by and outdated idea of the canon, but I say if that's what he knows and loves, then more power to him. It also happens to be, mostly, what I know and love.

There is an unintentionally humorous page after the classics section called "The Middle Ages," saying, essentially, sorry there's nothing on the Middle Ages, but see my other book. Since the whole premise of the book is that it's a personal selection, this seems unnecessary.

The book is, however, a fairly comprehensive guide to how (and why) we read, think, talk, and write about literature, and it's in that spirit that I will be offering it to my students.

The historical and biographical information that was in my area seemed accurate. None of it is credited directly in the text, probably because he's thinking of it as common knowledge. There are general references at the end of the book.

Like "comprehensiveness," the idea of "bias" is a bit tricky with a book like this since, again, it is unabashedly personal and based on his tastes. But he explains those wonderfully, often at the beginnings of chapters, talking about the mysterious reasons we're drawn to things in a way that I found very refreshing. It would be suspect to some in a professional context, but since it's written for students, he's allowed to talk about things like appreciation and emotion, that are such taboos in modern critical discourse. And yet he never talks down. To me this book is a welcome throwback to an earlier era of criticism.

He does very occasionally get carried away by an odd hobbyhorse, as in the quote below, which he admits is a digression. This may be seen as a kind of bias. To my mind, this example is comically hairsplitting. When people say a narrative viewpoint is cinematic they mean, obviously, that it's LIKE modern cinema, not that cinema actually inspired it: "If I may digress for a moment, let me note that contemporary critics are fond of pointing out that earlier writers use cinematic techniques. What we see here, however, is not that Eliot is using a cinematic technique, in which the camera moves closer to the subjects it is recording. Eliot preceded cinema. If cinema is using a technique that is similar to Eliot’s, then cinema is being novelistic, not the other way round."

As I say above, this book is deliberately and gloriously old-fashioned and as such can never go out of date.

I very much like the way it's written. It's not insulting to peers, and yet it would be perfectly clear, even engaging for a good undergrad student. Here's just one example where he very concisely and uncontentiously explains something that's always hard for me to get across to my students: "When we read literature, our focus has to be on what the words say, not on what the author intended. One reason that we have to take this stance is that an author’s words, even an author who is totally in control of those words, inevitably say more than the author intended. It even happens that the words may mean something that the author did not intend. "

The only instance I noticed where you could possibly accuse him of not explaining a term is when, in the Sir Philip Sidney chapter, he describes how a "Romantic poet" might have approached the same subject, without explaining what Romanticism is. But that might be asking too much--and might also have been insulting to readers who already know.

Yes, he brings similar emphases and methods to every text. Every chapter has most of the following: reading hints and what to expect, what's hard about the text for a modern reader, historical and biographical backgrounds, close readings of individual passages, attention to why and how it's enjoyable, a moral/character dimension, and much more. But it's not schematic. There are no headings, thank goodness. It's discursive and free ranging, not repetitive. He deals with issues as they come up--gender politics in the Jane Austen chapter, social inequality in the Dickens chapter.

Yes, while he does carry similar themes through the chapters, as I mention above, it could easily be assigned in pieces. His themes are so commonsense and human that they don't require one to read the introduction.

For myself, I plan on assigning the introduction, in which he deals with misconceptions about symbols, messages, and "what the author meant," in every literature class I teach from now on. In my upcoming online Survey of British Lit class, I'll definitely use the chapters on "Astrophil and Stella" and "Rape of the Lock." Anyone who happens to be teaching any of the texts he covers should have no hesitation in assigning that chapter by itself.

The flow is simply chronological. It doesn't continuously build an argument. But that's what makes it so useful as an OER. The organization within chapters is very logical, and I've touched on that a bit above, in the "Consistency" category.

No problems, although I did find myself thinking more than once that the paragraphs sometimes get awfully long, for a text that will most likely be read online, not in hardcopy. I know the intention was to make it look like a "real book," but I wonder if it might have been better to acknowledge the way it will actually be used and lightly apply some principles of visual design for online reading.

I did not notice any grammatical errors--and I was looking.

Within the limitations of the texts chosen--all firmly canonical and European--the text does a fair job of bringing out issues of social power, when relevant. I mentioned above the Jane Austen and Dickens chapters. There is an assumption that great literature is universal and anyone should be able to read it and respond, but I didn't notice much questioning of that idea. He doesn't attempt to address how students from non-white-European backgrounds, or even non-privileged backgrounds, might respond to these texts. But that might be another book.

I thank Professor Steinberg for the book, and applaud him for taking a stand that the enjoyment of literature matters, and that it's worth paying attention to our heart's response to it, not just our head's. It shouldn't be a controversial idea, but it is.

Reviewed by Katherine Scheil, Professor, University of Minnesota on 6/10/15

This book covers a wide range of material, from Homer to George Eliot, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. Other chapters focus on Sidney, Pope, Fielding, and Dickens. read more

This book covers a wide range of material, from Homer to George Eliot, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen. Other chapters focus on Sidney, Pope, Fielding, and Dickens.

This book offers an argument for the "the value and delight of reading literature," without watering it down, and for the power of the written word. Content is accurate and unbiased, and the argument of the book is stated upfront in the Introduction.

Unfortunately, challenges to the Humanities don't seem to be going away, so this book will likely have a long shelf life. The texts it deals with are timeless--Shakespeare, Homer, Jane Austen, etc.--and show no signs of becoming obsolete. The argument, that literature can delight and instruct, is an old argument, but needs to be articulated in fresh and new ways. This book makes an original contribution to the latter need.

This book is written in clear prose. with a straightforward argument about the value of literature and of the humanities. Very little jargon is used, which helps make the point that the Humanities "are among the things that make us human," and thus should be accessible to a broad audience.

This book offers a consistent introduction to the inexhaustibility of several representative texts from the canon of important works of literature. The author consistently returns to the question of why literature matters in each chapter. The book is written with an overt acknowledgment of the author's personal opinion of the value of these texts, and the author is clear about stating those views upfront.

This book is ideally designed to be read in sections, since each chapter deals with a major author and/or text. One could only read/assign the chapter on Shakespeare without much adjustment needed.

The book is clearly structured, with an introduction that sets out the principles and aims of the book, followed by individual chapters organized by author and text. The organization is straightforward and logical, and the argument is easy to follow through each chapter.

There were no issues of interface.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This book deals with works of literature that have endured for numerous centuries, while making the case that these works will continue to be relevant into the future. Examples range from ancient texts to nineteenth-century texts, including a close focus on two women authors--Jane Austen and George Eliot.

I hope that this book will have a significant impact on the value of the Humanities in contemporary culture and discourse.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Homer, The Iliad
• Chapter 3: Homer, The Odyssey and Virgil, The Aeneid
• Chapter 4: Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella
• Chapter 5: Shakespeare
• Chapter 6: Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”
• Chapter 7: Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
• Chapter 8: Jane Austen
• Chapter 9: Charles Dickens, Bleak House
• Chapter 10: George Eliot, Middlemarch

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Literature, the Humanities, and Humanity attempts to make the study of literature more than simply another school subject that students have to take. At a time when all subjects seem to be valued only for their testability, this book tries to show the value of reading and studying literature, even earlier literature. It shows students, some of whom will themselves become teachers, that literature actually has something to say to them. Furthermore, it shows that literature is meant to be enjoyed, that, as the Roman poet Horace (and his Renaissance disciple Sir Philip Sidney) said, the functions of literature are to teach and to delight. The book will also be useful to teachers who want to convey their passion for literature to their students. After an introductory chapter that offers advice on how to read (and teach) literature, the book consists of a series of chapters that examine individual literary works ranging from The Iliad to Charles Dickens' Bleak House. These chapters can not substitute for reading the actual works. Rather they are intended to help students read those works. They are attempts to demystify the act of reading and to show that these works, whether they are nearly three thousand or less than two hundred years old, still have important things to say to contemporary readers.

About the Contributors

Dr. Theodore L. Steinberg serves as Distinguished Teaching Professor in the English Department at SUNY Fredonia, where he specializes in medieval and Renaissance literatures, though he teaches in a wide variety of areas. His publications include studies of medieval and Renaissance English literature, medieval Judaica, modern epic, and Yiddish literature. He encourages students to see the contemporary relevance of older literatures and the importance of the humanities, particularly literature, in the development of civilized life.

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Literature (from the Latin Littera meaning 'letters' and referring to an acquaintance with the written word) is the written work of a specific culture , sub-culture, religion , philosophy or the study of such written work which may appear in poetry or in prose. Literature, in the west, originated in the southern Mesopotamia region of Sumer (c. 3200) in the city of Uruk and flourished in Egypt , later in Greece (the written word having been imported there from the Phoenicians ) and from there, to Rome . Writing seems to have originated independently in China from divination practices and also independently in Mesoamerica and elsewhere.

The first author of literature in the world, known by name, was the high-priestess of Ur , Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE) who wrote hymns in praise of the Sumerian goddess Inanna . Much of the early literature from Mesopotamia concerns the activities of the gods but, in time, humans came to be featured as the main characters in such poems as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and Lugalbanda and Mount Hurrum (c.2600-2000 BCE). For the purposes of study, Literature is divided into the categories of fiction or non-fiction today but these are often arbitrary decisions as ancient literature, as understood by those who wrote the tales down, as well as those who heard them spoken or sung pre-literacy, was not understood in the same way as it is in the modern-day.

The Truth in Literature

Homer 's soaring odes to the grandeur of the Grecian fleet sailing for Troy or Odysseus 's journey across the wine-dark sea were as real to listeners as his descriptions of the sorceress Circe , the cyclops Polyphemus or the Sirens. Those tales which today are regarded as myth were then considered as true and sacred as any of the writings contained in the Judeo-Christian Bible or the Muslim Quran are to believers. Designations such as fiction and non-fiction are fairly recent labels applied to written works. The ancient mind understood that, quite often, truth may be apprehended through a fable about a fox and some unattainable grapes. The modern concern with the truth of a story would not have concerned anyone listening to one of Aesop's tales; what mattered was what the story was trying to convey.

Even so, there was a value placed on accuracy in recording actual events (as ancient criticism of the historian Herodotus ' accounts of events shows). Early literary works were usually didactic in approach and had an underlying (or often overt) religious purpose such as in the Sumerian Enuma Elish of 1120 BCE or the Theogony of the Greek writer Hesiod of the 8th century BCE.

One of the earliest known literary works is the Sumerian/Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh from c. 2150 BCE which deals with themes of heroism, pride, nationality, friendship, disappointment, death , and the quest for eternal life. Whether what happened in the tale of Gilgamesh 'actually happened' was immaterial to the writer and to the listener. What mattered was what the audience was able to take away from the tale.

The best example of this is a genre known as Mesopotamian Naru Literature in which historical figures feature in fictional plots. The best-known works from this genre include The Curse of Agade and The Legend of Cutha , both featuring the great Akkadian king Naram-Sin (r. 2261-2224 BCE), grandson of Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334-2279 BCE, father of Enheduanna). Both of these works have Naram-Sin behaving in ways which are contradicted by physical evidence and other, more factual, writings. The purpose of Naru Literature, however, was not to relate what `really' happened but to emphasize a moral, cultural, and religious point.

Examples of Ancient Literature

The Pyramid Texts of Egypt, also considered literature, tell of the journey of the soul to the afterlife in the Field of Reeds and these works, unlike Mesopotamian Naru Literature, presented the subject as truth. Egyptian religious culture was based on the reality of an afterlife and the role the gods played in one's eternal journey, of which one's life on earth was only one part. Homer's Iliad recounts the famous ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans while his Odyssey tells of the great hero Odysseus's journey back home after the war to his beloved wife Penelope of Ithaca and this, like the other works mentioned, reinforced cultural values without a concern for what may or may not have happened concerning the war with Troy.

The story told in the biblical Book of Exodus (1446 BCE) is considered historical truth by many today, but originally could have been meant to be interpreted as liberation from bondage in a spiritual sense as it was written to empower the worshipers of Yahweh , encouraged them to resist the temptations of the indigenous peoples of Canaan , and elevated the audience's perception of themselves as a chosen people of an all-powerful god .

The Song of Songs (c. 950 BCE) from the Hebrew scripture of the Tanakh, immortalizes the passionate love between a man and a woman (interpreted by Christians, much later, as the relationship between Christ and the church, though no such interpretation is supported by the original text) and the sacred aspect of such a relationship. The Indian epic Mahabharata (c.800-400 BCE) relates the birth of a nation while the Ramayana (c. 200 BCE) tells the tale of the great Rama 's rescue of his abducted wife Sita from the evil Ravna. The works found in the Assyrian King Asurbanipal's library (647-627 BCE) record the heroic deeds of the gods, goddesses and the struggles and triumphs of heroic kings of ancient Mesopotamia such as Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh. Scholar Samuel Noah Kramer points out that the early Sumerian works - and, indeed, Sumerian culture as a whole - resonates in the modern day on many levels and is especially apparent in literature. Kramer writes:

It is still apparent in a Mosaic law and a Solomonic proverb, in the tears of Job and a Jerusalem lament, in the sad tale of the dying man-god, in a Hesiodic cosmogony and a Hindu myth, in an Aesopic fable and a Euclidean theorem, in a zodiacal sign and a heraldic design. (5)

Originality in Ancient Literature

Most early works were written in the poetical metre which the writer had heard repeated over time and, therefore, the dating of such pieces as the Enuma Elish or the Odyssey is difficult in that they were finally recorded in writing many years after their oral composition. The great value which modern-day readers and critics place on 'originality' in literature was unknown to ancient people. The very idea of according a work of the imagination of an individual with any degree of respect would never have occurred to anyone of the ancient world. Stories were re-tellings of the feats of great heroes, of the gods, the goddesses, or of creation, as in Hesiod and Homer.

So great was the respect for what today would be called 'non-fiction', that Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100-1155 CE) claimed his famous History of the Kings of Briton (which he largely made up) was actually a translation from an earlier text he had 'discovered' and Sir Thomas Malory (1405-1471 CE) famed as the author of the Morte D'Arthur , denied any original contributions to the work he compiled from earlier authors, even though today it is clear that he added much to the source material he drew from.

This literary tradition of ascribing an original work to earlier, seemingly-authoritative, sources is famously exemplified in the gospels of the Christian New Testament in that the gospels of Matthew, Mark , Luke, and John, understood by many believers to be eye-witness accounts of the ministry of Jesus , were written much later by unknown authors who chose names associated with the early church.

Literature encompasses forms such as poetry, drama, prose, folklore, epic tale, personal narrative, poetry, history, biography, satire, philosophical dialogues, essays, legends and myths, among others. Plato 's Dialogues , while not the first to combine philosophical themes with dramatic form, were the first to make drama work in the cause of philosophical inquiry. Later writers drew on these earlier works for inspiration (as Virgil did in composing his Aeneid , based on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey , between 30-18 BCE) and this tradition of borrowing lasted until the time of Shakespeare (1564-1616 CE) and continues in the present day.

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Bibliography

• Black, J. , et. al. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Durant, W. Caesar and Christ. Simon & Schuster, 1980.
• Hamilton, E. The Greek Way. W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.
• Hesiod. Hesiod. Loeb Classical Library, 2007.
• Homer. The Iliad and The Odyssey Translated by Samuel Butler. Buki Editions, 2009.
• Jonker, G. The Topography of Remembrance. Brill Publishing, 1995.
• Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. University of Chicago Press, 1971.
• Kriwaczek, P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. St. Martin's Griffin, 2012.
• Sandars, N. K. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Penguin Classics, 1973.
• Simpson, W. K. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. Yale University Press, 2003.
• Various Ancient Authors. Holy Bible, New King James Version. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2009.
• Wise Bauer, S. The History of the Ancient World. W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.

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• Writing Tips

What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

4-minute read

• 23rd October 2023

If you’re writing a research paper or dissertation , then you’ll most likely need to include a comprehensive literature review . In this post, we’ll review the purpose of literature reviews, why they are so significant, and the specific elements to include in one. Literature reviews can:

1. Provide a foundation for current research.

2. Define key concepts and theories.

3. Demonstrate critical evaluation.

4. Show how research and methodologies have evolved.

5. Identify gaps in existing research.

6. Support your argument.

Keep reading to enter the exciting world of literature reviews!

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is a critical summary and evaluation of the existing research (e.g., academic journal articles and books) on a specific topic. It is typically included as a separate section or chapter of a research paper or dissertation, serving as a contextual framework for a study. Literature reviews can vary in length depending on the subject and nature of the study, with most being about equal length to other sections or chapters included in the paper. Essentially, the literature review highlights previous studies in the context of your research and summarizes your insights in a structured, organized format. Next, let’s look at the overall purpose of a literature review.

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Literature reviews are considered an integral part of research across most academic subjects and fields. The primary purpose of a literature review in your study is to:

Provide a Foundation for Current Research

Since the literature review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the existing research, it serves as a solid foundation for your current study. It’s a way to contextualize your work and show how your research fits into the broader landscape of your specific area of study.  

Define Key Concepts and Theories

The literature review highlights the central theories and concepts that have arisen from previous research on your chosen topic. It gives your readers a more thorough understanding of the background of your study and why your research is particularly significant .

Demonstrate Critical Evaluation 

A comprehensive literature review shows your ability to critically analyze and evaluate a broad range of source material. And since you’re considering and acknowledging the contribution of key scholars alongside your own, it establishes your own credibility and knowledge.

Show How Research and Methodologies Have Evolved

Another purpose of literature reviews is to provide a historical perspective and demonstrate how research and methodologies have changed over time, especially as data collection methods and technology have advanced. And studying past methodologies allows you, as the researcher, to understand what did and did not work and apply that knowledge to your own research.  

Identify Gaps in Existing Research

Besides discussing current research and methodologies, the literature review should also address areas that are lacking in the existing literature. This helps further demonstrate the relevance of your own research by explaining why your study is necessary to fill the gaps.

Support Your Argument

A good literature review should provide evidence that supports your research questions and hypothesis. For example, your study may show that your research supports existing theories or builds on them in some way. Referencing previous related studies shows your work is grounded in established research and will ultimately be a contribution to the field.  

Literature Review Editing Services 

Ensure your literature review is polished and ready for submission by having it professionally proofread and edited by our expert team. Our literature review editing services will help your research stand out and make an impact. Not convinced yet? Send in your free sample today and see for yourself! 

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

What is a literature review? [with examples]

What is a literature review?

The purpose of a literature review, how to write a literature review, the format of a literature review, general formatting rules, the length of a literature review, literature review examples, frequently asked questions about literature reviews, related articles.

A literature review is an assessment of the sources in a chosen topic of research.

In a literature review, you’re expected to report on the existing scholarly conversation, without adding new contributions.

If you are currently writing one, you've come to the right place. In the following paragraphs, we will explain:

• the objective of a literature review
• how to write a literature review
• the basic format of a literature review

Tip: It’s not always mandatory to add a literature review in a paper. Theses and dissertations often include them, whereas research papers may not. Make sure to consult with your instructor for exact requirements.

The four main objectives of a literature review are:

• Studying the references of your research area
• Summarizing the main arguments
• Identifying current gaps, stances, and issues
• Presenting all of the above in a text

Ultimately, the main goal of a literature review is to provide the researcher with sufficient knowledge about the topic in question so that they can eventually make an intervention.

The format of a literature review is fairly standard. It includes an:

• introduction that briefly introduces the main topic
• body that includes the main discussion of the key arguments
• conclusion that highlights the gaps and issues of the literature

➡️ Take a look at our guide on how to write a literature review to learn more about how to structure a literature review.

First of all, a literature review should have its own labeled section. You should indicate clearly in the table of contents where the literature can be found, and you should label this section as “Literature Review.”

➡️ For more information on writing a thesis, visit our guide on how to structure a thesis .

There is no set amount of words for a literature review, so the length depends on the research. If you are working with a large amount of sources, it will be long. If your paper does not depend entirely on references, it will be short.

Take a look at these three theses featuring great literature reviews:

• School-Based Speech-Language Pathologist's Perceptions of Sensory Food Aversions in Children [ PDF , see page 20]
• Who's Writing What We Read: Authorship in Criminological Research [ PDF , see page 4]
• A Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experience of Online Instructors of Theological Reflection at Christian Institutions Accredited by the Association of Theological Schools [ PDF , see page 56]

Literature reviews are most commonly found in theses and dissertations. However, you find them in research papers as well.

There is no set amount of words for a literature review, so the length depends on the research. If you are working with a large amount of sources, then it will be long. If your paper does not depend entirely on references, then it will be short.

No. A literature review should have its own independent section. You should indicate clearly in the table of contents where the literature review can be found, and label this section as “Literature Review.”

The main goal of a literature review is to provide the researcher with sufficient knowledge about the topic in question so that they can eventually make an intervention.

• Aims and Objectives – A Guide for Academic Writing
• Doing a PhD

One of the most important aspects of a thesis, dissertation or research paper is the correct formulation of the aims and objectives. This is because your aims and objectives will establish the scope, depth and direction that your research will ultimately take. An effective set of aims and objectives will give your research focus and your reader clarity, with your aims indicating what is to be achieved, and your objectives indicating how it will be achieved.

Introduction

There is no getting away from the importance of the aims and objectives in determining the success of your research project. Unfortunately, however, it is an aspect that many students struggle with, and ultimately end up doing poorly. Given their importance, if you suspect that there is even the smallest possibility that you belong to this group of students, we strongly recommend you read this page in full.

This page describes what research aims and objectives are, how they differ from each other, how to write them correctly, and the common mistakes students make and how to avoid them. An example of a good aim and objectives from a past thesis has also been deconstructed to help your understanding.

What Are Aims and Objectives?

Research aims.

A research aim describes the main goal or the overarching purpose of your research project.

In doing so, it acts as a focal point for your research and provides your readers with clarity as to what your study is all about. Because of this, research aims are almost always located within its own subsection under the introduction section of a research document, regardless of whether it’s a thesis , a dissertation, or a research paper .

A research aim is usually formulated as a broad statement of the main goal of the research and can range in length from a single sentence to a short paragraph. Although the exact format may vary according to preference, they should all describe why your research is needed (i.e. the context), what it sets out to accomplish (the actual aim) and, briefly, how it intends to accomplish it (overview of your objectives).

To give an example, we have extracted the following research aim from a real PhD thesis:

Example of a Research Aim

The role of diametrical cup deformation as a factor to unsatisfactory implant performance has not been widely reported. The aim of this thesis was to gain an understanding of the diametrical deformation behaviour of acetabular cups and shells following impaction into the reamed acetabulum. The influence of a range of factors on deformation was investigated to ascertain if cup and shell deformation may be high enough to potentially contribute to early failure and high wear rates in metal-on-metal implants.

Note: Extracted with permission from thesis titled “T he Impact And Deformation Of Press-Fit Metal Acetabular Components ” produced by Dr H Hothi of previously Queen Mary University of London.

Research Objectives

Where a research aim specifies what your study will answer, research objectives specify how your study will answer it.

They divide your research aim into several smaller parts, each of which represents a key section of your research project. As a result, almost all research objectives take the form of a numbered list, with each item usually receiving its own chapter in a dissertation or thesis.

Following the example of the research aim shared above, here are it’s real research objectives as an example:

Example of a Research Objective

• Develop finite element models using explicit dynamics to mimic mallet blows during cup/shell insertion, initially using simplified experimentally validated foam models to represent the acetabulum.
• Investigate the number, velocity and position of impacts needed to insert a cup.
• Determine the relationship between the size of interference between the cup and cavity and deformation for different cup types.
• Investigate the influence of non-uniform cup support and varying the orientation of the component in the cavity on deformation.
• Examine the influence of errors during reaming of the acetabulum which introduce ovality to the cavity.
• Determine the relationship between changes in the geometry of the component and deformation for different cup designs.
• Develop three dimensional pelvis models with non-uniform bone material properties from a range of patients with varying bone quality.
• Use the key parameters that influence deformation, as identified in the foam models to determine the range of deformations that may occur clinically using the anatomic models and if these deformations are clinically significant.

It’s worth noting that researchers sometimes use research questions instead of research objectives, or in other cases both. From a high-level perspective, research questions and research objectives make the same statements, but just in different formats.

Taking the first three research objectives as an example, they can be restructured into research questions as follows:

Restructuring Research Objectives as Research Questions

• Can finite element models using simplified experimentally validated foam models to represent the acetabulum together with explicit dynamics be used to mimic mallet blows during cup/shell insertion?
• What is the number, velocity and position of impacts needed to insert a cup?
• What is the relationship between the size of interference between the cup and cavity and deformation for different cup types?

Difference Between Aims and Objectives

Hopefully the above explanations make clear the differences between aims and objectives, but to clarify:

• The research aim focus on what the research project is intended to achieve; research objectives focus on how the aim will be achieved.
• Research aims are relatively broad; research objectives are specific.
• Research aims focus on a project’s long-term outcomes; research objectives focus on its immediate, short-term outcomes.
• A research aim can be written in a single sentence or short paragraph; research objectives should be written as a numbered list.

How to Write Aims and Objectives

Before we discuss how to write a clear set of research aims and objectives, we should make it clear that there is no single way they must be written. Each researcher will approach their aims and objectives slightly differently, and often your supervisor will influence the formulation of yours on the basis of their own preferences.

Regardless, there are some basic principles that you should observe for good practice; these principles are described below.

Your aim should be made up of three parts that answer the below questions:

• Why is this research required?
• What is this research about?
• How are you going to do it?

The easiest way to achieve this would be to address each question in its own sentence, although it does not matter whether you combine them or write multiple sentences for each, the key is to address each one.

The first question, why , provides context to your research project, the second question, what , describes the aim of your research, and the last question, how , acts as an introduction to your objectives which will immediately follow.

Scroll through the image set below to see the ‘why, what and how’ associated with our research aim example.

Note: Your research aims need not be limited to one. Some individuals per to define one broad ‘overarching aim’ of a project and then adopt two or three specific research aims for their thesis or dissertation. Remember, however, that in order for your assessors to consider your research project complete, you will need to prove you have fulfilled all of the aims you set out to achieve. Therefore, while having more than one research aim is not necessarily disadvantageous, consider whether a single overarching one will do.

Research Objectives

Each of your research objectives should be SMART :

• Specific – is there any ambiguity in the action you are going to undertake, or is it focused and well-defined?
• Measurable – how will you measure progress and determine when you have achieved the action?
• Achievable – do you have the support, resources and facilities required to carry out the action?
• Relevant – is the action essential to the achievement of your research aim?
• Timebound – can you realistically complete the action in the available time alongside your other research tasks?

In addition to being SMART, your research objectives should start with a verb that helps communicate your intent. Common research verbs include:

Table of Research Verbs to Use in Aims and Objectives

Last, format your objectives into a numbered list. This is because when you write your thesis or dissertation, you will at times need to make reference to a specific research objective; structuring your research objectives in a numbered list will provide a clear way of doing this.

To bring all this together, let’s compare the first research objective in the previous example with the above guidance:

Checking Research Objective Example Against Recommended Approach

Research Objective:

1. Develop finite element models using explicit dynamics to mimic mallet blows during cup/shell insertion, initially using simplified experimentally validated foam models to represent the acetabulum.

Checking Against Recommended Approach:

Q: Is it specific? A: Yes, it is clear what the student intends to do (produce a finite element model), why they intend to do it (mimic cup/shell blows) and their parameters have been well-defined ( using simplified experimentally validated foam models to represent the acetabulum ).

Q: Is it measurable? A: Yes, it is clear that the research objective will be achieved once the finite element model is complete.

Q: Is it achievable? A: Yes, provided the student has access to a computer lab, modelling software and laboratory data.

Q: Is it relevant? A: Yes, mimicking impacts to a cup/shell is fundamental to the overall aim of understanding how they deform when impacted upon.

Q: Is it timebound? A: Yes, it is possible to create a limited-scope finite element model in a relatively short time, especially if you already have experience in modelling.

Q: Does it start with a verb? A: Yes, it starts with ‘develop’, which makes the intent of the objective immediately clear.

Q: Is it a numbered list? A: Yes, it is the first research objective in a list of eight.

Mistakes in Writing Research Aims and Objectives

1. making your research aim too broad.

Having a research aim too broad becomes very difficult to achieve. Normally, this occurs when a student develops their research aim before they have a good understanding of what they want to research. Remember that at the end of your project and during your viva defence , you will have to prove that you have achieved your research aims; if they are too broad, this will be an almost impossible task. In the early stages of your research project, your priority should be to narrow your study to a specific area. A good way to do this is to take the time to study existing literature, question their current approaches, findings and limitations, and consider whether there are any recurring gaps that could be investigated .

Note: Achieving a set of aims does not necessarily mean proving or disproving a theory or hypothesis, even if your research aim was to, but having done enough work to provide a useful and original insight into the principles that underlie your research aim.

2. Making Your Research Objectives Too Ambitious

Be realistic about what you can achieve in the time you have available. It is natural to want to set ambitious research objectives that require sophisticated data collection and analysis, but only completing this with six months before the end of your PhD registration period is not a worthwhile trade-off.

3. Formulating Repetitive Research Objectives

Each research objective should have its own purpose and distinct measurable outcome. To this effect, a common mistake is to form research objectives which have large amounts of overlap. This makes it difficult to determine when an objective is truly complete, and also presents challenges in estimating the duration of objectives when creating your project timeline. It also makes it difficult to structure your thesis into unique chapters, making it more challenging for you to write and for your audience to read.

Fortunately, this oversight can be easily avoided by using SMART objectives.

Hopefully, you now have a good idea of how to create an effective set of aims and objectives for your research project, whether it be a thesis, dissertation or research paper. While it may be tempting to dive directly into your research, spending time on getting your aims and objectives right will give your research clear direction. This won’t only reduce the likelihood of problems arising later down the line, but will also lead to a more thorough and coherent research project.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the purpose of a literature review.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

Frequently asked questions: Academic writing

A rhetorical tautology is the repetition of an idea of concept using different words.

Rhetorical tautologies occur when additional words are used to convey a meaning that has already been expressed or implied. For example, the phrase “armed gunman” is a tautology because a “gunman” is by definition “armed.”

A logical tautology is a statement that is always true because it includes all logical possibilities.

Logical tautologies often take the form of “either/or” statements (e.g., “It will rain, or it will not rain”) or employ circular reasoning (e.g., “she is untrustworthy because she can’t be trusted”).

You may have seen both “appendices” or “appendixes” as pluralizations of “ appendix .” Either spelling can be used, but “appendices” is more common (including in APA Style ). Consistency is key here: make sure you use the same spelling throughout your paper.

The purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method with a hands-on lab experiment. Course instructors will often provide you with an experimental design and procedure. Your task is to write up how you actually performed the experiment and evaluate the outcome.

In contrast, a research paper requires you to independently develop an original argument. It involves more in-depth research and interpretation of sources and data.

A lab report is usually shorter than a research paper.

The sections of a lab report can vary between scientific fields and course requirements, but it usually contains the following:

• Title: expresses the topic of your study
• Abstract: summarizes your research aims, methods, results, and conclusions
• Introduction: establishes the context needed to understand the topic
• Method: describes the materials and procedures used in the experiment
• Results: reports all descriptive and inferential statistical analyses
• Discussion: interprets and evaluates results and identifies limitations
• Conclusion: sums up the main findings of your experiment
• References: list of all sources cited using a specific style (e.g. APA)
• Appendices: contains lengthy materials, procedures, tables or figures

A lab report conveys the aim, methods, results, and conclusions of a scientific experiment . Lab reports are commonly assigned in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The abstract is the very last thing you write. You should only write it after your research is complete, so that you can accurately summarize the entirety of your thesis , dissertation or research paper .

If you’ve gone over the word limit set for your assignment, shorten your sentences and cut repetition and redundancy during the editing process. If you use a lot of long quotes , consider shortening them to just the essentials.

If you need to remove a lot of words, you may have to cut certain passages. Remember that everything in the text should be there to support your argument; look for any information that’s not essential to your point and remove it.

To make this process easier and faster, you can use a paraphrasing tool . With this tool, you can rewrite your text to make it simpler and shorter. If that’s not enough, you can copy-paste your paraphrased text into the summarizer . This tool will distill your text to its core message.

Revising, proofreading, and editing are different stages of the writing process .

• Revising is making structural and logical changes to your text—reformulating arguments and reordering information.
• Editing refers to making more local changes to things like sentence structure and phrasing to make sure your meaning is conveyed clearly and concisely.
• Proofreading involves looking at the text closely, line by line, to spot any typos and issues with consistency and correct them.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

Avoid citing sources in your abstract . There are two reasons for this:

• The abstract should focus on your original research, not on the work of others.
• The abstract should be self-contained and fully understandable without reference to other sources.

There are some circumstances where you might need to mention other sources in an abstract: for example, if your research responds directly to another study or focuses on the work of a single theorist. In general, though, don’t include citations unless absolutely necessary.

An abstract is a concise summary of an academic text (such as a journal article or dissertation ). It serves two main purposes:

• To help potential readers determine the relevance of your paper for their own research.
• To communicate your key findings to those who don’t have time to read the whole paper.

Abstracts are often indexed along with keywords on academic databases, so they make your work more easily findable. Since the abstract is the first thing any reader sees, it’s important that it clearly and accurately summarizes the contents of your paper.

In a scientific paper, the methodology always comes after the introduction and before the results , discussion and conclusion . The same basic structure also applies to a thesis, dissertation , or research proposal .

Depending on the length and type of document, you might also include a literature review or theoretical framework before the methodology.

Whether you’re publishing a blog, submitting a research paper , or even just writing an important email, there are a few techniques you can use to make sure it’s error-free:

• Take a break : Set your work aside for at least a few hours so that you can look at it with fresh eyes.
• Proofread a printout : Staring at a screen for too long can cause fatigue – sit down with a pen and paper to check the final version.
• Use digital shortcuts : Take note of any recurring mistakes (for example, misspelling a particular word, switching between US and UK English , or inconsistently capitalizing a term), and use Find and Replace to fix it throughout the document.

If you want to be confident that an important text is error-free, it might be worth choosing a professional proofreading service instead.

Editing and proofreading are different steps in the process of revising a text.

Editing comes first, and can involve major changes to content, structure and language. The first stages of editing are often done by authors themselves, while a professional editor makes the final improvements to grammar and style (for example, by improving sentence structure and word choice ).

Proofreading is the final stage of checking a text before it is published or shared. It focuses on correcting minor errors and inconsistencies (for example, in punctuation and capitalization ). Proofreaders often also check for formatting issues, especially in print publishing.

The cost of proofreading depends on the type and length of text, the turnaround time, and the level of services required. Most proofreading companies charge per word or page, while freelancers sometimes charge an hourly rate.

For proofreading alone, which involves only basic corrections of typos and formatting mistakes, you might pay as little as $0.01 per word, but in many cases, your text will also require some level of editing , which costs slightly more.

It’s often possible to purchase combined proofreading and editing services and calculate the price in advance based on your requirements.

There are many different routes to becoming a professional proofreader or editor. The necessary qualifications depend on the field – to be an academic or scientific proofreader, for example, you will need at least a university degree in a relevant subject.

For most proofreading jobs, experience and demonstrated skills are more important than specific qualifications. Often your skills will be tested as part of the application process.

To learn practical proofreading skills, you can choose to take a course with a professional organization such as the Society for Editors and Proofreaders . Alternatively, you can apply to companies that offer specialized on-the-job training programmes, such as the Scribbr Academy .

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• DOI: 10.1108/bfj-01-2024-0100
• Corpus ID: 270790352

Green Lean Six Sigma in the food industry: a systematic literature review

• Olivia McDermott , Cian Moloney , +1 author A. Rosa
• Published in British Food Journal 28 June 2024
• Environmental Science, Business, Agricultural and Food Sciences

57 References

Lean, six sigma and lean six sigma in the food industry: a systematic literature review, lean six sigma and environmental sustainability: the case of a norwegian dairy producer, gearing food manufacturing industry towards lean six sigma implementation: an exploratory study on readiness factors, trends and gaps for integrating lean and green management in the agri-food sector, green-lean synergy - root-cause analysis in food waste prevention, improving operational and sustainability performance in a retail fresh food market using lean: a portuguese case study, the effect of lean six sigma practices on food industry performance: implications of the sector's experience and typical characteristics, lean–green improvement opportunities for sustainable manufacturing using water telemetry in agri-food industry, reducing food waste through lean and sustainable operations: a case study from the poultry industry, green lean six sigma for sustainable development: integration and framework, related papers.

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