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The Role of Literature in Education: Why It Matters

Literature is more than just entertainment or a way to pass the time. It can shape our perspectives, challenge our beliefs, and inspire us to brood over the world. Literature is a valuable tool for developing critical thinking skills, empathy, and creativity in education. This post will explore why literature matters and how it can benefit students of all ages.

Literature Promotes Critical Thinking Skills

Reading literature requires active engagement and analysis, which helps develop critical thinking skills. When students read literature, they are forced to think deeply about the characters, themes, and messages presented in the text. They must analyze the author’s choices and consider how they contribute to the work’s overall meaning. Critical thinking is essential for success in many areas of life, including academics, careers, and personal relationships. Literature helps students become more thoughtful and independent thinkers by promoting critical thinking skills.

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Literature helps develop empathy and understanding.

Besides critical thinking skills, literature also helps students develop empathy and understanding. Through reading about characters from different backgrounds and experiences, students can gain a deeper understanding of the world around them. They can learn to see things from different perspectives and develop greater empathy for others. This is important in today’s diverse and interconnected world, where understanding and empathy are essential for building strong relationships and communities. By exposing students to a wide range of literature, educators can help foster a more compassionate and understanding society.

Literature Encourages Creativity and Imagination

Reading literature can spark creativity and imagination in students. By exposing them to different styles of writing, unique characters, and imaginative worlds, literature can inspire students to think outside the box and develop their creative ideas. This is important in a world where we value innovation and creativity. By encouraging students to read and engage with literature, educators can help foster a generation of creative thinkers and problem solvers.

Literature Provides a Window Into Different Cultures and Perspectives

One of the most critical roles of literature in education is its ability to provide a window into different cultures and perspectives. By reading literature from different parts of the world, students can better understand the experiences and perspectives of people from different backgrounds. This can help to promote empathy and understanding and can also help to break down stereotypes and prejudices. This is an essential skill for students to develop in a world that is becoming increasingly diverse.

Literature Can Inspire Personal Growth and Self-Reflection

Literature has the power to inspire personal growth and self-reflection in students. By reading about characters who face challenges and overcome them, students can learn valuable lessons about resilience, perseverance, and the importance of a positive attitude. Literature can help students reflect on their own experiences and emotions and provide a safe space to explore complex topics and feelings. This can be important for students who may not have access to other forms of emotional support or therapy.

Esther Lombardi

Esther A. Lombardi is a freelance writer and journalist with more than two decades of experience writing for an array of publications, online and offline. She also has a master's degree in English Literature with a background in Web Technology and Journalism.

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3.2: The Purpose of Literature

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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)

Authored by : Florida State College at Jacksonville. License : CC BY: Attribution
Race and Skulls. Authored by : Nott, Josiah, and George R. Giddon. Provided by : Wikimedia Commons. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Races_and_skulls.png . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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Article Contents

I. cognition, knowledge, and understanding, ii. learning from literature: the evidence, iii. conclusion.

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On Studying the Cognitive Value of Literature

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JUKKA MIKKONEN, On Studying the Cognitive Value of Literature, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , Volume 73, Issue 3, July 2015, Pages 273–282, https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12172

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The debate on the cognitive value of literature is undergoing a change. On the one hand, several philosophers recommend an epistemological move from “knowledge” to “understanding” in describing the cognitive benefits of literature. On the other hand, skeptics call for methodological discussion and demand evidence for the claim that readers actually learn from literature. These two ideas, the notion of understanding and the demand for evidence, seem initially inconsistent, for the notion of understanding implies that the cognitive benefits of literature are ultimately nonverbal and thus inarticulate. In this article, I defend both the move from knowledge to understanding and the demand for evidence. After proposing that the cognitive value of literature is best construed in terms of enhancing the reader's understanding, I argue that the place to look for evidence for the cognitive benefits of literature is not the laboratory but the practice of literature.

In the 1940s, Dorothy Walsh remarked that “the arts have customarily been regarded as a source of intellectual nourishment” and artworks “have been accepted as vehicles of insight, revelation, and enlarged comprehension.” 1 The “cognitivist” view that artworks, and literary works in particular, could provide their audiences significant knowledge and insight concerning matters of human interest has indeed been popular in philosophical aesthetics in the analytic tradition. Nevertheless, the opposite view has also had wide support. Skeptics have insisted that literary works do not furnish their readers with new knowledge, at least that of propositional kind, and that the works do not therefore have genuine cognitive value. According to these “anticognitivist” views, science and other knowledge‐seeking practices are the proper source of knowledge, and literature can merely offer an illusion of truth.

In this article, I discuss two intertwined issues in the recent literature and cognition debate. In the first part, I explore the benefits of “neo‐cognitivism,” suggesting that the concept of understanding outperforms the concept of knowledge in describing the various cognitive values associated with literature: the insights, viewpoints, and attitudes—the “enlarged comprehension”—that people are believed to gain from literature. 2 In the second part, I examine certain important factors that have been paid too little attention in the debate: the evidence that cognitivist theories provide for their claims and the methods used in studying learning from literature. I show that the question of evidence is complicated when it comes to neo‐cognitivism that is based on an unorthodox epistemological notion, namely, that of “understanding.” The problem is that because neo‐cognitivism describes the cognitive value of literature in terms of advancing the reader's understanding, it is very difficult to find articulations of those benefits, for the concept implies that they are ultimately nonverbal; yet, the neo‐cognitivist has to provide some evidence for his or her claims in order to avoid the dogmatic position that Hilary Putnam calls a “religion of literature.” 3 After studying different conceptions of justification implicit in the debate, I propose that the place to look for evidence for the cognitive benefits of literature is not psychological studies, which the naturalist‐minded skeptic favors, but the practice of literature and the study of it.

Although “cognition” in the general scientific sense refers to a wide variety of mental processes from language comprehension to problem solving, in analytic philosophy of literature it is customarily identified with the communication of knowledge and acquisition of true beliefs, cognitive value thus being narrowly epistemic value. 4 On the other hand, cognitivists have been rather reluctant to give elaborate definitions of their key concepts, such as ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’—not to mention concepts, such as ‘vision’ or ‘insight.’ In the discussion, truth , for instance, is commonly understood in a pretheoretical sense, or to cover both truth as correspondence and truth as coherence. 5 As for knowledge , in turn, it has been proposed that there are three sorts of knowledge that literary works can afford: first, knowledge that, or propositional knowledge; second, knowledge how, or skills; and third—deriving from the second kind of knowledge—experiential knowledge.

Anticognitivists have presented a wide variety of arguments against the idea that literary works could make genuine, substantial contributions to knowledge. While there might be several plausible ways to support the traditional cognitivist view that literary works may provide their readers propositional and/or nonpropositional knowledge, the standard concepts of truth and knowledge certainly appear too narrow in comprehensively capturing the assumed cognitive benefits of literature. Moreover, in identifying the cognitive value of literature with truth and knowledge, literature is made subordinate to informative discourses and practices that constitutively seek knowledge. The question of the cognitive significance of literature is ultimately about the distinctive cognitive value of literature, not about literature's ability to mimic informative discourses or employ devices used in science and philosophy, such as thought experiments. Therefore, many cognitivists have been eager to find alternative epistemic notions in describing the cognitive value of literature.

During the recent decades, several philosophers have argued that the cognitive value of literature is not primarily in the works supplying new knowledge to readers but operating on the knowledge that readers already possess. These views may be called neo‐cognitivist theories . They state, roughly put, that the cognitive value of literature lies in the works “advancing” or “clarifying” readers’ understanding of things they already know, “enhancing” or “enriching” their existing knowledge, “entrenching” their ways of thinking, or helping them to “acknowledge” things, to see concepts contextualized in “concrete forms of human engagement.” 6 In addition to “deepening” readers’ knowledge, neo‐cognitivists see literary works capable of training readers’ cognitive skills , to make them psychologically more sensitive, for instance.

The basic idea behind neo‐cognitivism is compelling, and numerous philosophers are broadly sympathetic to the intuition. However, not only does the notion of “understanding” have different meanings for different neo‐cognitivists but also the concept is customarily described in a self‐consciously metaphorical way; not many philosophers have systematically explored it from an epistemological point of view. Indeed, Catherine Z. Elgin is among those few who have pursued the idea of art in the “advancement of understanding.” 7 Following Nelson Goodman, Elgin gives the concept of understanding a high priority. She claims that understanding should be a central epistemological concern, as the concept is needed to explain, for instance, why knowledge is valuable. 8 In Elgin's view, understanding differs from belief as it is about subject matters rather than individual propositions: we understand facts but also actions, techniques, pictures, and the like. 9 Further, understanding is holistic , as it covers the whole phenomenon and cannot be broken into bits. 10 Understanding may also be nonverbal , as in a mechanic's understanding of carburetors. 11 In addition, whereas one either knows or does not know a given fact, understanding comes in degrees : a professor and a student share many scientific beliefs, but they give them different significance. 12 In general, Elgin conceives understanding as a cognitive faculty that includes “the collection of abilities to inquire and invent, discriminate and discover, connect and clarify, order and organize, adopt, test, reject.” 13 She maintains that “perception, recognition, classification, and pattern detection” are all cognitive activities. 14 For her, the advancement of understanding is, among other things, conceptual reorganization that manifests in a person's ability to form insightful questions. 15

Applied to art, the idea of the advancement of understanding maintains that artworks may develop readers’ perception, provide them new perspectives to familiar things, help them acknowledge previously unnoticed relations between concepts, and offer them new categories for classifying objects. 16 In a nutshell, neo‐cognitivism holds that a reader (or viewer) needs to employ his or her concepts in order to comprehend an artwork and that precisely this conceptual rehearsal leaves its trace on the reader's (or viewer's) conceptual apparatus. In Elgin's example, the comparison of Michelangelo's Pietà and Picasso's Guernica , which both portray a woman holding her dead child—helps us to understand the difference between “incalculable sorrow” ( Pietà ) and “unmitigated grief” ( Guernica ); by comparing these paintings, we come to recognize that “grief … is grittier; it is tinged with anger. Sorrow … is smooth.” 17

The neo‐cognitivist's move from knowledge to understanding captures many familiar aspects in our encounter with literary works, and there is much in the position that makes it appealing. For example, our inability to draw “messages” out of literary works becomes a cognitive benefit of literature: rather than providing answers, literary works provoke questions and prompt us to explore solutions for them. This aspect is interesting as we attribute literary value to bewilderment and perplexity that characterize literary experience. Because of their complexity, literary works often escape our attempts to formulate theses out of their content; yet, we sense that the works are getting at something very important. Moreover, in preferring understanding to true beliefs we can attach cognitive value to false views that literary works express or convey and in comprehending—yet not accepting— distorted , for example, immoral, viewpoints. 18 In reading literature, we do not learn what the real world is like; rather, we come to learn what it looks like for a depressed person, for example. 19 Neo‐cognitivism could even account the cognitive value of propagandistic works, as the works, false (or mythological) by design, help us to understand persuasion and human psychology, for instance. Also, the procedural epistemology behind neo‐cognitivism, that is, the view that literary works trigger cognitive processes and that understanding comes in degrees, is intuitively absorbing. It could be used in explaining, from a cognitive point of view, why people return to works they consider important and why they render the works’ content differently in different times. The notion of degrees would also explain why people who differ in their literary competence get different views out of literary works.

The anticognitivist is not, however, satisfied with the neo‐cognitivist's ideas about conceptual reorganization and procedurality. Instead, the anticognitivist may claim that in explaining the cognitive benefits of literature in terms of “enhancing understanding,” the neo‐cognitivist merely “resorts to metaphors” or even takes a “full‐blown obscurantist position.” 20 The anticognitivist could also remark that “understanding” is already a disputable epistemological concept. Nevertheless, were the anticognitivist to consider the neo‐cognitivist's epistemological explanations descriptive enough, there is still the question of justification. Peter Lamarque wisely asks,

How is this “illumination” or “enhanced” understanding manifested? Would we expect that those immersed in the great works of literature understand people and the world better than those who are not so well read? Yet there seems no evidence that such readers are especially knowledgeable about human traits, as are psychologists or social scientists or even philosophers. 21

However, the parties of the debate are not in agreement about what counts as evidence of such changes. A look at different notions of justification is thus in place.

ii.A. The Armchair

Appeals to intuition as evidence have traditionally been central in analytic philosophy. In the philosophy of literature, the philosopher often illuminates her conception of “the” reader and the perlocutionary effect of a given work by describing her personal experience with the work; others are expected to react to the work the way the intuitive reader does. Moreover, it is a widely held belief in the philosophy of literature that interpretations can be, at least partly, normative : a philosopher can support her theoretical claims by showing that the interpretation she proposes is possible, rewarding, and better than its rivals. When it comes to the cognitive value of literature, it is thought that the philosopher's task is to show, by pointing to particular works, what kind of things readers can learn from literature and help others to see those features. The anticognitivist may, however, consider this way of justification insufficient and state that she has not herself recognized any conceptual change as a result of reading the work. She may claim that in reading the work she is simply offered a perspective toward the fictional content of the work. Because of these differing intuitions, both parties are eager to extend their claims as to describe how general readers react to fictional works.

A growing number of philosophers are dissatisfied with the traditional armchair approach. Gregory Currie argues that cognitivists’ claims of the educative function of the works “are all empirical claims with no self‐validating power” and that the educative function “cannot be known in advance of seeing what sorts of behavioural changes exposure to the narrative in question leads to.” 22

Currie's demand for empirical evidence points to a blind spot in the discussion. Nonetheless, one has to be careful in interpreting the cognitivist's claims. To begin with, there are roughly two different, although partly intertwined, philosophical projects interested in literature: first, the project that seeks to use literary works in philosophical enquiry and which has been prominent especially in moral philosophy and, second, the project that aims to explain the cognitive benefits of literature in general. Of these, the former project does not attempt to describe the practice of literature and cannot thus be accused for the lack of empirical evidence. Moreover, it is not always clear whether a philosopher's claims in the second project are descriptive or normative; “empirical” claims about general readers may be simply rhetorical. As for their normativity, one may of course ask if an epistemologically oriented philosopher is a good guide to literary interpretation. Notwithstanding, cognitivists have to a great extent ignored the reader and the actual effect the works might have.

ii.B. The Laboratory

In recent years, many philosophers have been eager to look at the sciences in order to advance the debate on literature and cognition. According to the naturalistic approach, promoted by philosophers such as Currie, philosophers should in the first place turn their eyes to psychological studies on actual readers. Because “we,” that is, human beings, have similar imaginative capacities and structure of the mind, together with certain shared cultural beliefs and attitudes, “we” are claimed to respond to fictional works basically the same way. 23 The study of these naturalistic tendencies is believed to shed light on philosophical issues.

At the same time, there has been a growing interest in the cognitive and emotive effects of literary narratives in psychology and neurosciences. The results of recent empirical psychological studies are diverse and controversial, and it is open to dispute what they can be said to show. To mention some examples, studies have attempted to show that readers really gain information from fictional narratives; that readers’ act of “transporting” themselves into the story affects their actual beliefs; that fictional narratives make long‐term changes in readers’ actual beliefs; that fictional stories foster empathy and emotional perception and allow people to experience and understand emotions more clearly than in real life; that reading fiction helps people to predict human behavior or understand life in terms of human intentions; that the understanding of characters in fictional narratives parallels the comprehension of peers in the actual world; and that reading literary fiction leads to improved performance on affective and cognitive theory of mind. 24

Despite that many psychological studies seem to support the cognitivist position, their explanatory potential in the philosophy of literature is not obvious. While psychologists themselves are often cautious in their conclusions, philosophers and literary scholars have tended to accept the alleged results at their face value. Not enough attention has been given to methodological matters such as: Were the narratives presented for the subjects literary narratives or artificial narratives devised especially for experimental purposes? Were the subjects given full literary works or just excerpts? How was the material introduced to the subjects? What sort of instructions they were given? How did the study eliminate the other possible cognition‐enhancing factors, such as reading nonfiction?

Indeed, many studies in empirical psychology seem to pose more questions than answers for a philosopher. For instance, in a recent study that gained much transdisciplinary interest, psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano measured the cognitive and affective effects of reading excerpts of different kinds of narratives by showing their subjects computer‐generated pictures of facially expressed emotions and asking the subjects to infer the character's thoughts and emotions from “minimal linguistic and visual cues.” 25 As the effects of reading excerpts of literary works were measured using fictional scenarios, one might argue that the study did not measure actual effects—or “real life responses”—of reading literary works proper. Currie thinks that while it may be true that the experiments so far conducted do not “target the conditions philosophers consider most conducive to literary education,” such as sensitive subjects and highly valued literary works, that may be known only by taking interest in the empirical work. 26 Indeed, Currie argues that philosophers should keep themselves aware of the state of the evidence and frame their hypotheses in ways that suggest how the tests may be carried out. Furthermore, he proposes that philosophical theories of epistemic value of literature—how we might learn from literature—are still needed in order to provide explanatory options for psychological work. 27

One might wonder whether cooperation between experimental psychologists and literary scholars might be the best way to gather evidence that would be experimentally rigorous and yet sensitive to the reading of literature. In fact, during the recent decades many literary scholars have been eager to apply the tools of experimental psychology and cognitive science to the interpretation of literary narratives. 28 In cognitive poetics, literary interpretation is studied using psychological concepts, such as schema and script . According to schema theory, the interpretation of human experience is an automatic process, an act of identification, in which the subject organizes experiential information using his or her existing cognitive frameworks or concepts ( schemas ), such as gender roles, and structure of actions performed in repeated situations ( scripts ), such as visiting a grocery store. 29

Literary scholars have, however, debated whether the interpretation of literary works could be reduced to the reader's act of employing her existing schemas. Those who support the fashionable idea of “unnatural narratives” have argued that many literary works, especially those of innovative sort, “defy, flaunt, mock, play, and experiment with some (or all) of these core assumptions about narrative.” 30 Literary works often twist readers’ “natural,” everyday schemas, perhaps creating new conceptions. 31 As the literary scholar Jan Alber sees it, “some literary texts not only rely on but also aggressively challenge the mind's fundamental sense‐making capabilities.” 32 Already in free indirect discourse, the origin of fictional thoughts—whether they belong to the experiencing or the narrating mind—is often unclear. From the cognitivist's point of view, the focus on narrative might also be questionable, for literary works might have cognitive value that cannot be reduced to their narrativity.

What is more worrisome is that in using cognitive psychological concepts, literary scholars and philosophers outsource the epistemology of literature to psychology and submit to natural scientific notion of knowledge, which manifests itself, for instance, in the quasi‐physical notion of event applied in cognitive narratology. Indeed, the empirical psychological study and the neo‐cognitivist's position seem utterly incompatible. The acquisition of knowledge from literature or short‐term improvements in perception might perhaps be (to some extent) scientifically studied, but as Putnam remarks, what the (neo‐)cognitivist is after is “a rival kind of knowledge, and hence inaccessible to scientific testing.” 33 The neo‐cognitivist notion of understanding seems closer to a hermeneutic phenomenological conception of knowledge, or knowledge of a person's comprehensive experience of the world. If we construe understanding from the point of view of the reader's phenomenological experience of the work, it is difficult to see how the actual cognitive benefits of literature could ever be quantified and measured. How could we test, for instance, how literature helps us to see the significance of things or gives meaning to our experiences or helps us to make our lifeworld? Such things can be evaluated only from the perspective of the subject , who gives the work a meaning, not outside him or her. The enhanced understanding gained by reading fictional literature is akin to happiness, marital satisfaction, or a mechanic's comprehension of carburetors in that it can be conceived only from inside. 34

Reading literature is not a natural activity, a stimulus–response mechanism, whose effects could be measured as one can measure how a human eye reacts to light. Instead, as has often been emphasized, literary works are cultural artifacts whose interpretation requires skills and knowledge, such as knowledge of literary conventions and history. The neo‐cognitivist's conception of understanding and the idea of reading as a cultural activity does not, however, remove the cognitivist's burden of proof; rather, it invites a look at literary interpretation as performed by professional readers.

ii.C. The Practice of Criticism

Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen suggest that were literature to have cognitive value, we would expect to find evidence for it from the practice of criticism. As they see it, the proper “literary” way of reading is to be found from the core of criticism, literary analysis in particular. Lamarque and Olsen themselves think that the lack of debate on literary truths in criticism implies that truth is not a literary value. 35 In the neo‐cognitivist approach, in turn, criticism is a true treasure chamber. Critical analyses of how a given work challenges the reader's conceptual thinking, questions her standard conceptions, and provides her new categories, for instance, give valuable evidence—and insight—for the neo‐cognitivist. Indeed, even standard literary histories describe what sort of cognitive functions literary works have been given in different periods and literary genres. According to Jesse Matz,

The novel inherited by the moderns … seemed essentially traditional—slow, staid, set, and so unable to match the flux, the bewilderment, the excitement that now defined modern life. Therefore the moderns tried to “make it new” by trading the novel's regular forms for experimental forms of flux, perplexity, openness, skepticism, freedom, and horror. They replaced omniscience with fixed or fallible perspectives, broke their chapters into fragments, made sex explicit, and dissolved their sentences into the streams and flows of interior psychic life. 36

Of great importance are, of course, critical descriptions of particular literary works. Robin Feuer Miller says that, in The Brothers Karamazov , Dostoyevsky asks us to contemplate “great questions,” such as the problem of evil and the overcoming of grief felt at the loss of a child. 37 For Malcolm V. Jones, the novel “echoes and develops some of the most ancient paradoxes and preoccupations of humanity” and is capable of “plumbing and illuminating the depths of the human soul.” 38 In reading the work, we are invited to perform conceptual enquiries, for we “find ourselves drawn from our focus on the murder story to questions of moral responsibility and guilt, complicity and collusion.” 39 Moreover, this contemplating does not limit to the reading of the work, as “its characters and the dramatic events in which they participate continue to agitate the memory long after the book has been put down.” 40

Now, critics have the literary competence required in analyzing the cognitive content of the work and paraphrasing it. They describe in detail how literary works express and explore the abstract themes they are about. Nonetheless, in critical analysis, the cognitive function of literature is commonly approached in terms of implicit readers . Two questions emerge: first, do literary works genuinely contribute to actual readers’ thought (the perlocutionary effect) and, second, do critics and general readers approach literary works for same purposes, for example, for philosophical insights conveyed by a work? Noël Carroll, for one, claims that philosophers have not paid enough attention to the common reader but “often build their theories in response to certain epistemological constraints that have little to do with the actual reception of art.” 41 After pointing the way to “the actual reception of art,” Carroll however reverts to his armchair view of the general interests of “typical consumers of art and literature.” 42 However, the question of actual reception needs to be explored.

ii.D. The Practice of Literature

In debating the cognitive value of literature, cognitivists and their opponents tend to disagree about what the “common reader” looks for in literature. Eileen John, for one, thinks that readers frequently take a philosophical, that is, conceptual analytical, attitude to certain kinds of literary works. 43 Lamarque objects to John's claim by saying that readers seldom have “‘cognitive’ expectations,” for they “are not commonly motivated to read such works by the thought that they will learn something.” 44 Lamarque states that conceptual clarification rather “looks like a contingent by‐product of reading.” 45 Is it? The aprioristic debate quickly arrives at a dead end. Moreover, speculations about typical literary responses seem futile, as there is information concerning common readers, the consumptors of literature.

In addition to the practice of academic literary analysis that provides us information about how professional readers approach literary works, there are literary studies on reception as performed by general readers. Some of these studies are explicitly after the question of how texts change the minds and lives of actual readers. 46 Reception studies carried out in literary studies cover various approaches from reception history to sociological studies of contemporary audiences and even social psychology; the studies may, for example, examine critical response or employ interviews in qualitatively studying actual readers.

For instance, literary historical studies on the reception of particular works illustrate how the works have been approached and understood in different times. Such studies are important in showing, for example, that for the readers of The Brothers Karamazov , “cognitive expectations” have always been central. 47 Interestingly, certain recent studies of contemporary audiences suggest that while people report to read fictional literature primarily for pleasure, that is, entertainment and relaxation, the cognitive factor, their motive to gain knowledge or enlightenment from reading, is also significant. 48 What makes literary reception studies important for the neo‐cognitivist is that they examine the reading of actual and complete literary works in the actual setting: the literary practice. Nonetheless, sociological literary studies, for instance, might not deeply capture the insights that people think they have gained from literature. As suggested earlier, the neo‐cognitivism view of understanding calls for a subject's point of view.

In addition to the two promising sources of evidence (or aspects to it), critical analysis and literary reception studies, evidence for the neo‐cognitivist might be found from readers’ descriptions of their literary experiences, especially as expressed in nonfictional writings that traditionally link to literature and emphasize one's influences and attitudes to life: essay and autobiography. For example, in his memoirs, the philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright describes one of his intellectual awakenings:

In my solitary walks in Buenos Aires [in 1968] my mind was occupied with disturbances in Paris and other parts of the world. I came to deeply realize Dostoyevsky's story about the Grand Inquisitor. I felt as if I understood the profound, tragic meaning of life and history: if a man should carry out his natural capabilities to do good, he has to have a freedom to do evil. One capability requires another. The powers of self‐preservation and self‐annihilation keep each other in balance in the man. I mention this episode, because it gave me the attitude that still determines my thinking. It is not objective knowledge, but a way, though not the only way, to contemplate life. 49

Von Wright's statement is impressive, but many philosophers and literary theorists alike suspect references to actual readers because of the assumed idiosyncrasy of the responses. Of course, our knowledge of readers’ actual responses to literary works does not solve any philosophical debates. Of course, studies of literary reception are more or less contingent, as they deal with particular literary cultures, particular works, and particular readers. Of course, reception studies require interpretation and critical consideration as for their aims, concepts, methods, and results. Nevertheless, one's looking at descriptions of personal literary experiences and literary reception studies can shed light on the values that people look for in literature and hopefully give an insight of what people think they have gained from reading the works. Do they look for “insight, revelation, and enlarged comprehension” in reading literature, and do they report to come to see things, such as the difference between “incalculable sorrow” and “unmitigated grief”? At least von Wright did; in his later life, he wrote several philosophical essays on the insights he had drawn from Dostoyevsky and other authors.

I agree with those who are skeptical about the cognitive value of literature in that the cognitivist has to support his or her claims about the cognitive value of literature with evidence stronger than mere reference to the textual features of the works. At the same time I am afraid that there is no direct way to such evidence. As for its methodology, philosophy of literature is perhaps best considered in a pluralistic fashion. It needs a metacritical element in order to understand what it is to approach a literary work as an artwork. If the enhancement of understanding is an important literary phenomenon, one will find evidence for it from the practice of criticism. Nevertheless, academic literary analysis is theory driven and does not represent all the values that general readers search for in literature; nor does critical analysis examine the perlocutionary effects of the works. It is thus important for a philosophical survey to also have a constraint from the actual practice of literature. While the reception of literature can be studied from various viewpoints, I propose that a philosopher would benefit most from looking at literary historical and sociological reception studies conducted by literary scholars, for such studies are acquainted in theories of reading and examine the actual practice of literature. Finally, in understanding in what ways literary works actually advance one's understanding and affect one's thought, we need the subject's, the reader's, point of view, to which documents such as essays and autobiographies provide one route.

What is the place for the philosophy of literature, then? It is in the overall analysis of the phenomenon of literature. As for studying the cognitive benefits of literature, there are philosophical issues, such as the notion of “cognitive benefit” and the relation between aesthetic and cognitive values in literature. Even if the results of empirical studies of literary reception were to be univocal and prove that fictional literature has cognitive benefits, the fact that people learn from literature is not much of a discovery. After all, various sorts of things may “enhance our understanding,” and yet we hesitate to call these things, such as gossiping about one's neighbor, cognitive practices. 50 A philosophical theory would need to account the distinctive features of literary cognition, that is, how literary works provide heightened perception in a unique way, as works of literature. Critics’ descriptions of literary works’ cognitive content are often metaphorical, especially when the works provide new viewpoints or violate the commonplace, and the “plumbing and illuminating the depths of the human soul” calls for epistemological scrutiny.

The notion of “cognitive value” in literary aesthetics also requires reexamination. One thing is, as I have proposed, the move from knowledge to understanding, which seems fascinating but requires much more theoretical exploration. The other is the demand for the cognitive payoff of literature, which, in turn, seems too strict. Anticognitivists often imply that in order to be cognitively valuable, learning from literature should be equal to that of learning scientific facts. Obviously this is partly due to cognitivists’ grandiose claims of the beneficial effects of literature and their eagerness to place art on a par with science. Perhaps we need new analogues. For example, the reading of nonfiction, such as essays, biographies, and journals, hardly offers readers revolutionary changes in worldview or insights that stay with them for the rest of their lives—things anticognitivists regularly consider to be in the heart of “cognitive value.” More often, learning from nonfiction assumedly amounts to slight changes in the reader's understanding of things. Perhaps even the readers of self‐help guides soon forget the informative content of the works, not to mention acting upon that information, although the guides are written and read in order to (completely) change one's life. Presumably a large part of the “cognitive content” of both nonfiction and fiction is in the works inspiring one in one's journey.

Many will object that the neo‐cognitivist notion of understanding makes the cognitive outcome of literature too contingent. What is it that we learn in literature? Does a given work enhance our understanding in a certain way, say, under the perspective of authorial control, or is it that literature influences more than educates us? Von Wright, for instance, speaks of his impression and suggests that the insight he has gained from The Brothers Karamazov has a subjective and affective dimension. Does this lead to a position we have to avoid? Do we have to stick to the rather questionable idea of “objective meaning” of a literary work and maintain that the cognitive content of a literary work is fixed and will be automatically grasped in the act of reading? Indeed, the turn from knowledge to understanding implies a difficult move from text to experience. Clearly, a great deal of theoretical work is needed to properly establish such moves, but the road seems worth taking.

Dorothy Walsh, “The Cognitive Content of Art,” Philosophical Review 52 (1943): 433–451, at p. 433.

The term ‘neo‐cognitivism’ is adopted from John Gibson, “Cognitivism and the Arts,” Philosophy Compass 3 (2008): 573–589.

Hilary Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection,” in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 83–94, at p. 89.

For traditional notions of the cognitive value of literature, see, for example, Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism , 2nd edition (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), p. 426, and M. J. Sirridge, “Truth from Fiction?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 35 (1975): 453–471, at p. 453.

Actually, there may even be several conceptions of truth underlying a single theory of literary truth. See Peter Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), at pp. 225–227.

Respectively, Catherine Z. Elgin, “Understanding: Art and Science,” Synthese 95 (1993): 13–68; Noël Carroll, “Art, Narrative, and Moral Understanding,” in Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection , ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 126–160; Gordon Graham, Philosophy of the Arts: An Introduction to Aesthetics , 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2000); Eileen John, “Reading Fiction and Conceptual Knowledge: Philosophical Thought in Literary Context,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56 (1998): 331–348; and John Gibson, Fiction and the Weave of Life (Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 111, 116.

Elgin derives the idea of preferring the “advancement of understanding” to formation of belief from Nelson Goodman, who also prefers ‘rightness’ to ‘truth.’ See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), at pp. 22, 109–110.

Catherine Z. Elgin, “Understanding and the Facts,” Philosophical Studies 132 (2007): 33–42; see also Catherine Z. Elgin, “From Knowledge to Understanding,” in Epistemology Futures , ed. Stephen Hetherington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), pp. 199–215.

Catherine Z. Elgin, Considered Judgment (Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 123.

Catherine Z. Elgin, “Understanding's Tethers,” in Epistemology: Contexts, Values, Disagreement , eds. Christoph Jäger and Winfried Löffler (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2012), pp. 131–146, at pp. 131–132.

Elgin, “Understanding: Art and Science,” p. 14.

Elgin, “Understanding and the Facts,” p. 36; see also Catherine Z. Elgin, “Is Understanding Factive?” in Epistemic Value , eds. Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar, and Duncan Pritchard (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 322–330, at p. 325.

Nelson Goodman and Catherine Z. Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy and Other Arts and Sciences (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 161.

Catherine Z. Elgin, “Reorienting Aesthetics, Reconceiving Cognition,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (2000): 219–225, at p. 219.

See Catherine Z. Elgin, “Art in the Advancement of Understanding,” American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (2002): 1–12.

See Elgin, “Art in the Advancement of Understanding.” For a variation of this view, see David Novitz, Knowledge, Fiction, and Imagination (Temple University Press, 1987), pp. 119–120.

Elgin, “Understanding: Art and Science,” p. 23.

Here, see Catherine Z. Elgin, “True Enough,” Philosophical Issues 14 (2004): 113–131.

See Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection,” pp. 89–90.

Peter Lamarque, “Learning from Literature,” The Dalhousie Review 77 (1997): 7–21, at pp. 19–20; and Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection,” p. 89. (On metaphors, see also Jerome Stolnitz, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Criticism: A Critical Introduction [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960], pp. 305–306; and Jerome Stolnitz, “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art,” British Journal of Aesthetics 32 [1992]: 191–200, at pp. 191–193, 196.)

Lamarque, “Learning from Literature,” p. 20.

Gregory Currie, “On Getting Out of the Armchair to Do Aesthetics,” in Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or the Laboratory? ed. Matthew C. Haug (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 435–448, at pp. 446 and 447. For criticism of the lack of evidence in literary theory, see also Colin Martindale, “Empirical Questions Deserve Empirical Answers,” Philosophy and Literature 20 (1996): 347–361, and Richard A. Posner, “Against Ethical Criticism,” Philosophy and Literature 21 (1997): 1–27, at pp. 9–10.

See Gregory Currie, Narratives and Narrators: A Philosophy of Stories (Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 111–112, 116.

Respectively, see, for example, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Michelle L. Meade, and Henry L. Roediger III, “Learning Facts from Fiction,” Journal of Memory and Language 49 (2003): 519–536; Melanie C. Green and Timothy C. Brock, “The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79 (2000): 701–721; Markus Appel and Tobias Richter, “Persuasive Effects of Fictional Narratives Increase Over Time,” Media Psychology 10 (2007): 113–134; Dan R. Johnson, “Transportation into a Story Increases Empathy, Prosocial Behavior, and Perceptual Bias toward Fearful Expressions,” Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012): 150–155; P. Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp, “How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy? An Experimental Investigation on the Role of Emotional Transportation,” PLoS One 8 (2013): doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055341; Keith Oatley, “Why Fiction May Be Twice as True as Fact: Fiction as Cognitive and Emotional Simulation,” Review of General Psychology 3 (1999): 101–117; Richard J. Gerrig and David N. Rapp, “Psychological Processes Underlying Literary Impact,” Poetics Today 25 (2004): 265–281; Raymond A. Mar and Keith Oatley, “The Function of Fiction Is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3 (2008): 173–192; Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley, Jacob Hirsh, Jennifer dela Paz, and Jordan B. Peterson, “Bookworms versus Nerds: Exposure to Fiction versus Non‐Fiction, Divergent Associations with Social Ability, and the Simulation of Fictional Social Worlds,” Journal of Research in Personality 40 (2006): 694–712; Raymond A. Mar, Keith Oatley, and Jordan B. Peterson, “Exploring the Link between Reading Fiction and Empathy: Ruling Out Individual Differences and Examining Outcomes,” Communications 34 (2009): 407–428; David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” Science 342 (2013): 377–380.

Kidd and Castano, “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind,” p. 379.

Currie, “On Getting Out of the Armchair to Do Aesthetics,” p. 444.

Gregory Currie, “Methods in the Philosophy of Literature and Film,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology , eds. Herman Cappelen, John Hawthorne, and Tamar Szabó Gendler (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

For theories of literary interpretation that rely on cognitive psychology and cognitive science for literary interpretation, see, for example, David Herman, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind (MIT Press, 2013); Lisa Zunshine, Why We Read Fiction (The Ohio State University Press, 2006); Alan Palmer, Fictional Minds (University of Nebraska Press, 2004); and Richard J. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (Yale University Press, 1993).

For an illustration of—and doubt in—explaining interpretation in terms of schemas and scripts, see, for example, Richard J. Gerrig and Giovanna Egidi, “Cognitive Psychological Foundations of Narrative Experiences,” in Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences , ed. David Herman (Stanford: CSLI Publications, 2003), pp. 33–55, at pp. 40–41.

Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson, “Unnatural Narratives, Unnatural Narratology: Beyond Mimetic Models,” Narrative 18 (2010): 113–136, at p. 114.

See, for example, Jan Alber, Stefan Iversen, Henrik Skov Nielsen, and Brian Richardson, “What Is Unnatural about Unnatural Narratology? A Response to Monika Fludernik,” Narrative 20 (2012): 371–382.

Jan Alber, “Impossible Storyworlds—and What to Do with Them,” Storyworlds: a Journal of Narrative Studies 1 (2009): 79–96, at p. 80.

Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection,” p. 89; emphasis in original.

For an illuminating philosophical inquiry on the advancement of a mechanic's experiential understanding of engines, see Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (New York: Penguin, 2009).

Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature: A Philosophical Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 332–333. Some philosophers have, however, argued that critics do explicate implicit theses in literary works and that it is the task of general readers to evaluate the theses. See Peter Kivy, Philosophies of Arts: An Essay in Differences (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 122, 125; see also Noël Carroll, On Criticism (New York and London: Routledge, 2009), p. 56. Some others have argued that certain critical terms, such as “profundity” or “psychological plausibility,” have a conceptual connection with truthfulness; see M. W. Rowe, “Lamarque and Olsen on Literature and Truth,” Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1997): 322–341, at p. 336, and Gregory Currie, “Literature and Truthfulness,” in Rationis Defensor: Essays in Honour of Colin Cheyne , ed. James Maclaurin (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer, 2012), pp. 23–31, at pp. 28–30.

Jesse Matz, “The Novel,” in A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture , ed. David Bradshaw and Kevin J. H. Dettmar (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 215–226, at p. 215.

Robin Feuer Miller, The Brothers Karamazov: Worlds of the Novel (Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 5 and ix.

Malcolm V. Jones, Introduction to The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Knopf, 1992), pp. i–xiv, at pp. i, ii.

Jones, “Introduction,” p. iv.

Jones, “Introduction,” p. i.

Noël Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60 (2002): 3–26, at p. 15; see also Peter Kivy, “On the Banality of Literary Truths,” Philosophic Exchange 28 (1997): 17–27, at pp. 20–21.

Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue,” p. 15.

John, “Reading Fiction and Conceptual Knowledge,” p. 331.

Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature , p. 254.

Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature , p. 250.

See Jonathan Rose, “Rereading the English Common Reader: A Preface to a History of Audiences,” Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 47–70.

See, for example, Julian W. Connolly's account of critics’ and common readers’ (early) responses to the work, including the reactions of Nietzsche, Zweig, Hesse, Freud, and Mann, in Julian W. Connolly, Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), chap. 5.

For a detailed review of some such studies, see Anders Pettersson, The Concept of Literary Application: Readers’ Analogies from Text to Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 171–180.

Georg Henrik von Wright, Mitt liv som jag minns det ([“My Life as I Remember it”] Stockholm: Söderström, 2001), p. 267. Author's translation.

See Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature , p. 248.

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Using Literature in the Classroom

In today’s technology-filled world, where 140 character limits are the norm, is there any place for long, old-fashioned novels in the classroom?

There are a number of reasons why English teachers are turning back to literature as a way to develop students’ reading skill:

As most English language literature is written for native speakers, it prepares learners for the types of language they will have to read and understand in the real world.
It encourages students to communicate with others, by sharing their thoughts and feelings about the story.
Students engage with the attitudes and opinions expressed by the author or the characters. This helps students to develop their sense of self, their moral code, and their understanding of the world.
Exposure to non-standard forms of English (as is often found in novels) can help students to recognize norms and patterns.
Books written by popular authors will likely be more interesting and engaging than texts in language course books, no matter how much effort is put into writing them.
Literature is motivating, as finishing a book is a real achievement for language learners.

Most importantly, by fostering a love of reading from a young age, students become independent learners who, whenever they pick up a book to read for pleasure, are actually improving their language skills more than any homework task could.

On our young learner holiday courses at the British Council, we weave literature into a course which promotes a range of skills. The book we are using for our up-coming courses is ‘The BFG’ by Roald Dahl. His weird and fantastical novels are the perfect starting point for your child to explore the English language as well as develop a love of reading.

If you’d like to learn more about our holiday courses, please contact us at +60 (0)3 2723 7900

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Children's Literature in Education

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Children's Literature in Education has been a key source of articles on all aspects of children's literature for more than 50 years, featuring important interviews with writers and artists. It covers classic and contemporary material, the highbrow and the popular, and ranges across works for very young children through to young adults. It features analysis of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional material, plus studies in other media such as film, TV, computer games, online works; visual narratives from picture books and comics to graphic novels; textual analysis and interpretation from differing theoretical perspectives; historical approaches to the area; reader-response work with children; ideas for teaching children's literature; adaptation, translation and publishing.

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Education Literature Review: Education Literature Review

What does this guide cover.

Writing the literature review is a long, complex process that requires you to use many different tools, resources, and skills.

This page provides links to the guides, tutorials, and webinars that can help you with all aspects of completing your literature review.

The Basic Process

These resources provide overviews of the entire literature review process. Start here if you are new to the literature review process.

Literature Reviews Overview : Writing Center
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The Role of the Literature Review

Your literature review gives your readers an understanding of the evolution of scholarly research on your topic.

In your literature review you will:

survey the scholarly landscape
provide a synthesis of the issues, trends, and concepts
possibly provide some historical background

Review the literature in two ways:

Section 1: reviews the literature for the Problem
Section 3: reviews the literature for the Project

The literature review is NOT an annotated bibliography. Nor should it simply summarize the articles you've read. Literature reviews are organized thematically and demonstrate synthesis of the literature.

For more information, view the Library's short video on searching by themes:

Short Video: Research for the Literature Review

(4 min 10 sec) Recorded August 2019 Transcript

Search for Literature

The iterative process of research:

Find an article.
Read the article and build new searches using keywords and names from the article.
Mine the bibliography for other works.
Use “cited by” searches to find more recent works that reference the article.
Repeat steps 2-4 with the new articles you find.

These are the main skills and resources you will need in order to effectively search for literature on your topic:

Subject Research: Education by Jon Allinder Last Updated Aug 7, 2023 3571 views this year
Keyword Searching: Finding Articles on Your Topic by Lynn VanLeer Last Updated Sep 12, 2023 17592 views this year
Google Scholar by Jon Allinder Last Updated Aug 16, 2023 11703 views this year
Quick Answer: How do I find books and articles that cite an article I already have?
Quick Answer: How do I find a measurement, test, survey or instrument?

Video: Education Databases and Doctoral Research Resources

(6 min 04 sec) Recorded April 2019 Transcript

Staying Organized

The literature review requires organizing a variety of information. The following resources will help you develop the organizational systems you'll need to be successful.

Organize your research
Citation Management Software

You can make your search log as simple or complex as you would like. It can be a table in a word document or an excel spread sheet. Here are two examples. The word document is a basic table where you can keep track of databases, search terms, limiters, results and comments. The Excel sheet is more complex and has additional sheets for notes, Google Scholar log; Journal Log, and Questions to ask the Librarian.

Search Log Example Sample search log in Excel
Search Log Example Sample search log set up as a table in a word document.
Literature Review Matrix with color coding Sample template for organizing and synthesizing your research

Writing the Literature Review

The following resources created by the Writing Center and the Academic Skills Center support the writing process for the dissertation/project study.

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Beyond the Literature Review

The literature review isn't the only portion of a dissertation/project study that requires searching. The following resources can help you identify and utilize a theory, methodology, measurement instruments, or statistics.

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Books and Articles about the Lit Review

The following articles and books outline the purpose of the literature review and offer advice for successfully completing one.

Chen, D. T. V., Wang, Y. M., & Lee, W. C. (2016). Challenges confronting beginning researchers in conducting literature reviews. Studies in Continuing Education, 38(1), 47-60. https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2015.1030335 Proposes a framework to conceptualize four types of challenges students face: linguistic, methodological, conceptual, and ontological.
Randolph, J.J. (2009). A guide to writing the dissertation literature review. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 14(13), 1-13. Provides advice for writing a quantitative or qualitative literature review, by a Walden faculty member.
Torraco, R. J. (2016). Writing integrative literature reviews: Using the past and present to explore the future. Human Resource Development Review, 15(4), 404–428. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534484316671606 This article presents the integrative review of literature as a distinctive form of research that uses existing literature to create new knowledge.
Wee, B. V., & Banister, D. (2016). How to write a literature review paper?. Transport Reviews, 36(2), 278-288. http://doi.org/10.1080/01441647.2015.1065456 Discusses how to write a literature review with a focus on adding value rather and suggests structural and contextual aspects found in outstanding literature reviews.
Winchester, C. L., & Salji, M. (2016). Writing a literature review. Journal of Clinical Urology, 9(5), 308-312. https://doi.org/10.1177/2051415816650133 Reviews the use of different document types to add structure and enrich your literature review and the skill sets needed in writing the literature review.
Xiao, Y., & Watson, M. (2017). Guidance on conducting a systematic literature review. Journal of Planning Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X17723971 Examines different types of literature reviews and the steps necessary to produce a systematic review in educational research.

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What Are the Functions of Literature?

The functions of Literature range from entertainment, language learning and usage, character training, social progress, cognitive development and psychology to motivation for personal growth.

Are you searching for the most important functions of Literature? Then you are in the right place. In this post, I will show you the major functions of Literature as they apply to you as an individual, to education and to society as a whole.

What is Literature all about?

Literature is about life. Thus, Literature is about people, be they individuals or groups of individuals.

Literature is all about the places and environments in which people live, work and interact with one another. Literature is about the actions of real people like you and me. In fact, literature is about the motives behind those actions. Literature is about time and moments in time.

As you can see, Literature is a product of the way we live as social human beings.

Literature comes in many forms. Check out just a few here.

stories or fiction or narrative prose
poetry and music
films or movies
different works of art

So what are the functions of literature? Here are six functions of literature for you.

1. Literature entertains.

One of the most important functions of Literature is that it is a source of entertainment and leisure. Literature, be it comedy or tragedy, has the power to excite and make people feel refreshed.

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2. Literature forces us to use all our senses.

Literature thus has the abiding effect of making us remain active and conscious beings.

3. Literature teaches us valuable lessons about human nature.

Another function of Literature is that it instils in us a spirit of tolerance and understanding. Literature enables us to live harmoniously with one another.

Here are some popular Literature books to enjoy:

INVISIBLE MAN
HARVEST OF CORRUPTION
THE GREAT GATSBY
LOOK BACK IN ANGER
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
SECOND CLASS CITIZEN
A RAISIN IN THE SUN

4. Literature has a moral effect on society.

Satirical and didactic literary works, for example, are known to have played a positive role in changing the behaviour of individuals and the way societies are organized.

In fact, literature is a powerful tool for effecting behavioural and social change.

5. Literature improves and enriches our use of language.

This is borne out of the fact that the main medium of literary expression is language. The home of idioms, figures of speech and other stylistic expressions is Literature.

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6. Literature inspires.

Stories, movies, plays, speeches, and poems have since time immemorial inspired people to do great things.

Are you encouraged by the benefits you can derive from studying Literature? There is a host of resources available on the web you can access to learn more about Literature at your own convenience.

Just take a quick look at these inspiring works of literature.

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Ralph Nyadzi

Ralph Nyadzi is the Director of Studies at Cegast Academy. He is a qualified English tutor with decades of experience behind him. Since 2001, he has successfully coached thousands of High School General Arts WASSCE candidates in English, Literature and related subjects. He combines his expertise with a passion for lifelong learning to guide learners from varying backgrounds to achieve their educational goals. Ralph shares lessons from his blogging journey on BloggingtotheMax . He lives with River, his pet cat, in the Central Region of Ghana.

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4 thoughts on “what are the functions of literature”.

Thank you for providing a comprehensive list of the functions of literature! As a reader and literature enthusiast, I wholeheartedly agree that literature has the power to shape our perspectives, evoke emotions, and foster empathy. The idea that literature can be used as a tool for social and political commentary is particularly insightful. I will definitely be sharing this post with my friends and fellow book lovers. Great job!

Not complete 🔻🤬😤

Thank you so much.

Functions of Literature

Journal for Foreign Languages

Literature is an open concept and a creative art which expresses human history, experiences, imagination, observations, predictions and suggestions at a particular time in a given society. Either as fiction or non-fiction, literature can be rendered in both spoken and written words. It is often argued whether literature is for itself or the development of the society that produces it. This study, therefore, interrogates how the selected Francophone African novels, namely Sembène Ousmane’s Les bouts de bois de Dieu, Mariama Bâ’s Une si longue lettre, Ferdinand Oyono’s Le vieux nègre et la médaille, Aminata Sow Fall’s La grève des bàttu, Patrick Ilboudo’s Les vertiges du trône and Fatou Keïta’s Rebelle, depict the function of literature. The novelists are selected because of their inclination towards the social transformation paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to raise people’s awareness and mobilize them towards positive change. Based on close reading, the paper is built around M...

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IOSR Journals

Like sociology, Literature is concerned with man"s social world, his adaptation to it and his desire to improve it. Literature is a social institution, which uses Language as its medium. Literature represents life and to a large extent, a social reality. An ideal literature therefore reflects the happenings in its society. It reflects the economy, politics, religion and culture of its society. It consequently mirrors the diverse mood and tempers of its society. Specifically, African Literature is a vital tool in the hands of African literary artists, used to criticize the social, economic and political situations in their African society with the aim of challenging and proffering solutions to the unpleasant and oppressive practices by its leaders and the led. This particular inquiry examines how Otagburuagu"s "Echoes of violence" and Osorfisan"s "Colours Makes the Thunder King" have revealed the political situations in Nigeria. This exploration is anchored on the sociological theory of literature. This theory studies the correlation between Literature and society as the different norms of behavior in different societies and they are reflected in their respective literature; descriptive data analysis technique, primary and secondary data collection methods. This study reveals that African literary writers have taken the position of judges, Umpires, national reformers, civil right activists and cultural revivalists all for the emancipation of Africa and Africans.

rejoice dalut

African Studies Review

Ajumeze Henry

Chantal Zabus

Research in African Literatures

Issah Tikumah

This paper attempts to trace the various vicissitudes of the evolution and development of African Literature: from oral literature, through pre-colonial literature, colonial literature, to post-colonial literature. African literature is defined as ‘literature of and from Africa’. However, though cursory reference is made to non-English African literatures as well, the focus of this paper is literature of English ‘black Africa’. A special page is devoted to African-American literature because of its unique historical position in the development of African literature. The foundations of modern African literature as an intellectual ‘school’ are traced back to the middle of the 18th century. Modern African literature emerged as a resistance platform, an instrument of struggle against oppression and exploitation. Unfortunately, more than a couple of centuries on, African literature is still faced with formidable challenges, including lack of freedom of expression imposed by political authoritarianism and socio-cultural reactionarism. Even though a great deal of achievement has been recorded since its inception in the 18th century, African literature still has a long way to go in the struggle to fulfill its mission to foster socio-political justice and true liberty for the common people of Africa.

Tanure Ojaide

Canadian Review of Comparative Literature Revue Canadienne De Litterature Comparee

Harry Garuba

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What Are the Functions of Literature?

What is Literature all about?

1. Literature entertains.

2. Literature forces us to use all our senses.

3. Literature teaches us valuable lessons about human nature.

4. Literature has a moral effect on society.

5. Literature improves and enriches our use of language.

Related Posts

6. Literature inspires.

Ralph Nyadzi

SHARE THIS POST

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