Wimmin against Literature

To care about literature, to teach it and make it a part of your life, you have to understand what it is and what it does. Does literature make you a better person? Matthew Arnold thought that it might. Robert Frost doubted it, but did think that literature raised human experience “to a higher level of regard.” Lionel Trilling once remarked in a Columbia class that you may read a great book, but a great book also reads you—it judges, silently, your quality of response. My own view is one of wonder: that this human being, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Bronte, Hemingway, could write so well—could conceive the hitherto inconceivable sentence.

Literature also has to do with memory. These writers, now dead, wrestled with the great questions, even as we stumblingly do, and generously—but was it generosity or pride—bestowed upon us their legacy.

About the Author

Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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To care about literature, to teach it and make it a part of your life, you have to understand what it is and what it does. Does literature make you a better person? Matthew Arnold thought that it might. Robert Frost doubted it, but did think that literature raised human experience “to a higher level of regard.” Lionel Trilling once remarked in a Columbia class that you may read a great book, but a great book also reads you—it judges, silently, your quality of response. My own view is one of wonder: that this human being, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Bronte, Hemingway, could write so well—could conceive the hitherto inconceivable sentence.

Literature also has to do with memory. These writers, now dead, wrestled with the great questions, even as we stumblingly do, and generously—but was it generosity or pride—bestowed upon us their legacy.