Abstract
Literature, we argue, is about ‘meaning’ and not about ‘truth’. Most school subjects, including the humanities, are about truth-seeking and knowledge-building. Literature is different. A literary work is entirely fictional. It offers no knowledge in the usual sense of that word, but it offers a form of understanding because it engages with the world in an indirect way. It presents the reader with a dramatic but fictional narrative situation, in which fictional people, places and events instantiate social practices and engage with social and moral concepts. The reader is invited to grapple with both the particular situation and with the more general practices and concepts.
The study of literature in the classroom is thus best practised as a whole class discussion of the story and of the practices and the concepts embodied in it. In this way the study of literature resembles the study of philosophy, especially the study of social and moral philosophy. However, literature differs markedly from philosophy, because a literary work presents no arguments and makes no truth claims. It operates more at the level of particulars than generalities and abstractions, and we call this level of operation ‘dramatic instantiation’. Literature thus has a unique place in the school curriculum.
Philosophy, it is often said, teaches not what to think but how to think. Literature is even more minimal. It teaches neither what nor how to think. Instead, it offers materials about which to think. A literary work is a ‘machine for thinking’, as IA Richards put it. Good literature offers materials for thinking which have proven over time to be worth thinking about. The experience of such materials is uniquely valuable and a necessary part of any good education.© 2025 Alan Tapper, Raymond Driehuis, published by University of Birmingham Library Services
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