What Literary Studies Could Be, And What It Is

Taking a literature class in college could be a life-changing experience. Literature can help us give names to feelings and situations that did not have names, allows us to understand what has happened and what is happening to us so we can move forward. This is all that literary studies could be. Nowadays it rarely is. In the last fifty years or so the professorate has developed a new animal: literary studies. The point of reading is no longer to help students process their world. It is not about helping students achieve freedom from the limitations of their own viewpoints or their own youth; instead it is about control. Every person discovers the world anew, comes to problems as if for the first time. Literature can help them see that others have done the same before them, and give them ways to make their own decisions, live their own life. Professors can be the coaches in this so-momentous undertaking, guiding, showing, encouraging, challenging. This is a profession we could be proud to belong. Soon, with luck, we might be able to cry: Literary Studies is dead! Long Live Literature!