Why Study Literature? Part Two

2. ‘It’s alive!’ - Reasons to Study Literature:

1. ‘When you’re working in the money markets, what good are the novels of Wordsworth.’ (Four Weddings and a Funeral)

Whilst the above quotation may make even those with only a passing interest in literature shiver, it highlights a view about education in the arts that is far too common - that while it be nice to learn about fine art and works of literature, it is essentially useless. 

Few people express this view about science, because with an education in science you can become a doctor; if you choose to study law, parents will beam at the thought of having a solicitor or a barrister in the family.  However, if you tell your parents that you want to go to art school or write for a living and many parents will furrow their brows and internally judge their offspring, as though they had expressed a wish to join the circus.  Say you wish to audition for X Factor and many parents will encourage and support, but say you want to become a painter and they will grimace and think ‘why can’t they just get a proper job?’

This, perhaps, says something about our society and the values it holds as important.  The reason that doctors and solicitors (or bankers, or civil servants, or teachers) are seen as desirable professions still is because they offer a degree of stability, but are also relatively well paid (although increasingly less so if you work in the public sector these days, but that is a different argument).  The highest paid work is often found in the financial sector and the legal sector, and, as a result, are increasingly seen as the most desirable sectors to work in these days.  Artists, as the stereotype goes, struggle.  It is true that writing rarely earns you a wealthy existence - for every J.K. Rowling there are a thousand struggling to get by; for every A Song of Ice and Fire there are a thousand fantasy novels published each year that few people will have heard of.  Before Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling struggled by for years.  In other words, people do not go into the arts to make a lot of money (or they shouldn’t).  There are easier ways to become wealthy (particularly if you aren’t too concerned about how you do it).  

This is, perhaps, why many people struggle with the idea of studying and writing literature - they do not really understand what it is for.  Our view of work is that it should be about wealth creation - what makes you the most money.  Artists often see what they do in very different terms.  This is not, primarily, about making money, it is about the thing being created.  That is what has value - not the monetary value that is attached to it.

This is not to say that art is superior to any other form of learning or knowledge.  Scientists often pursue their studies not out of a sense of monetary gain, but because they value what they do as important, which it is.  Science is about finding ways to explain and/or sustain life; Art is about making that life worth living.

Imagine a world without art.  No films, television dramas/comedies, novels, poems, music, paintings, sculptures etc.  Our lives would be hollow and empty as well as highly insular.  Art challenges us to consider other perspectives, other cultures, other times; it asks to consider morality, our existence, our experience of sentient thought, it engages our emotions - in other words, it goes to the heart of what makes us human.

Therefore, whatever you do for a living, whatever profession you choose to follow, you have a better chance of maintaining your integrity to who you are if you engage with artistic works.  It will make you a better human, and allow you to understand other people and different situations better.  It will help you to empathise and sympathise.  It may not make you better at playing the money markets, and it might help you to understand the consequences of choices that you make.  

So if you want to go into the arts as a profession, and someone tells you that ‘there’s not much money in that’, nod your head and reply, ‘you are right, but there is a great deal of value in it.’   

2. ‘A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.’  Italo Calvino

One of the questions frequently asked whenever I taught a text that was pre-twentieth century (Shakespeare in particular), was ‘what is the point of studying this now?’  It is understandable that a student may not immediately see the value in studying something that is over a hundred years old.  After all, what could the concerns of the writer and the character within this novel have to do with them?  However, this misses the point of what we study literature for (and this is the fault of the education system, not the student).  

Often, the answer given to this question is jingoistic - Shakespeare is great writer; part of the fabric of English patriotism; it is tradition; that Shakespeare is part of the English canon or that he is quintessentially English - part of that mythical view of the ‘green’ England, innocent, pure and heroic.  To an extent, there is some truth in this, but none of these are reasons to study Shakespeare, particularly.  

Shakespeare was a highly popular writer of his age.  Not necessarily the best playwright of the time - Ben Johnson and Christopher Marlowe, at least, have as good claims to that title - he was undoubtedly the writer who most clearly encapsulated his age.  His plays spanned two monarchs, and a time of great historical significance to England and they captured the tone and mood of the period in a similar way to that of Dickens in the Victorian period.  Shakespeare’s historical plays turned Elizabeth’s Tudor ancestors into heroes - especially Henry V, who is glorified for Agincourt and for the speech which Shakespeare gave him in his eponymous play.  Macbeth is written shortly after The Gunpowder Plot, and the play details the tragic consequences for murdering a king (kings were seen by many as appointed by God, so regicide was not only treason, but sacrilegious as well).  The play can easily be seen as critical of the Catholic plotters plan to kill James I of England - it was also believed that the real Banquo, one of Macbeth’s victims in the play, was James I’s ancestor.  These are merely two examples, Shakespeare’s plays commonly refer to contemporary societal attitudes towards sex, women, marriage, race, politics, war, ambition and so on.  

In short, the reason for studying Shakespeare is not because he is a canonical writer, but because he gives us insight into another world - we can learn about laws and attitudes in history books, but Shakespeare brings those concerns to life and shows the effect on people.  He allows the audience to share in their emotional state, to become angry at a character’s selfishness or maliciousness, or to sympathise with characters who have had terrible things happen to them.  Shakespeare also allows us to empathise, for many of the concerns he presents are still concerns today.  Whilst there are not many of us who have been told we will become king or queen by three witches, we probably have faced a situation in which we have been tempted into doing something immoral for our personal benefit.  Othello illustrates how a racist society can create tensions within a relationship (also differences in age - think Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones or Stephen Fry and Elliott Spencer).  Romeo and Juliet presents us with the dangers of teenage ‘infatuation’, which can be mistaken for love, and overbearing and restrictive parents.  King Lear is really about old age, madness and legacy.  All of these ideas are still concerns today, and at the heart of Shakespeare’s plays, we are told stories about human nature - the fact that they are kings, or aristocracy or military leaders etc. is largely irrelevant to these issues.

So in Shakespeare we see that, while the attitudes, values, political systems, societal structures, dress, the language and so on may change, these are plays about human nature and the human condition, and this is something that does not change.  Humans are just humans, whatever century they live and whatever position they hold.  To return the quotation at the top of this section, whenever Shakespeare is brought to a new generation, it will make that new generation consider how it relates to them in their world, its similarities and differences, and, most importantly it will ask them to think about those concerns that lie in the heart of it, and probably, think about them differently to the previous generation.

In fact, this is true of all literature - for example, The Great Gatsby is focused on 1920s America, with its excesses and moral hypocrisy.  However, it is also relevant today - it focuses on attitudes about status, the position of women, relationships, greed, immigration, the widening gap between rich and poor - all central concerns of our culture as much as Fitzgerald’s.  Philip K Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (popularised by its film adaptation Blade Runner), challenges the reader to consider human nature and what, precisely, makes us human, particularly as technology develops and changes the human body (consider how often we interact with technology now, compared with how often we interact with an actual person).  By seeing these ideas from a distance, and another perspective, it allows us to consider them objectively and philosophically.  We also understand that the concerns we may have are intrinsically human concerns - they are not tied to a particular time period or place, but affect all of us, all of the time.  Literature teaches us to empathise with one another - to see the similarities between us - so rather than see people in other cultures or other times as different, we see them as being people like us.  Their situations and societies may be very different, but they are still human, with the same nature as ourselves.   

This, of course, is the function of literature as a whole - to present the reader with something unfamiliar to them and their world and, in doing so, force them to think.  If we were to read a book that outlined something similar to our own life it would not be that engaging to us - what could we learn by having our life retold back to us.  By presenting us with something unfamiliar, the writer asks us to consider a new perspective, a new way of looking at the world.  In doing so, we automatically attempt to find things that we identify with.  This then causes us to see similarities in our situation and our life to someone else whose life is different to ours.  It makes us more tolerant, more understanding; it challenges us to see the world the way someone else sees it.  Literature makes us more sensitive and more understanding and helps us to become the best version of ourselves.  So the next time someone says that there is no point reading stories that aren’t true, be sensitive to their point of view, and then whack them around the head with a book.   

NEXT in this series: How to write more effectively.