Abstract:
Literature offers experiments with human experience and perspectives. For that reason, it retains its appeal in the wider world, but within education, literary studies is in decline. The field could restore its mojo by recognising that most of what humans do depends on our understanding one another individually and collectively, and that literature offers unique ways of deepening that understanding. The first and most consequential of human inventions, language and storytelling, reach their peak in literature. Storytelling builds on human ultrasociality and on our eagerness to explore human nature and experience, human possibilities, and predicaments. Poetry, across all cultures, depends on the poetic line, which places language under the spotlight of attention and invites play with and pressure on words and meanings. By tracking the problems of characters and probing the problems of authors, students can develop a better capacity to problem-solve and to understand the problem solving of others. And as they head for the future, they will know they have access to the presents of the past, as they seek out new stories and poems, new experiments with experience.