What is the Value of Literary Studies?

Abstract

What is the value of involvement with literature? The twentieth century has given a scientific answer to this question: because it is there. I call the world view underpinning this answer the "knowledge" paradigm. The nineteenth century, by and large, gave a moralistic answer: because it makes us better people. The view at the base of this answer I call the "wisdom" paradigm. Most of the problems facing our conceptualization of literary studies in the West today come from the fact that we are only slowly becoming aware of the disadvantages of the "knowledge paradigm" but do not wish to return to the discarded "wisdom" paradigm, whose disadvantages are clearer. This leads to a reliance on an unacknowledged patchwork combination of both, and so to theoretical confusion.