Reading Between and Beyond the Lines

In current times, some individuals claim that literature is a useless discipline. Moreover, if you were taking such studies in discipline some would say that it is a waste of time and effort. In addition, some would emphasize that there this is an inferior discipline as compared to the sciences. Due to the age of information, literature is pushed aside by the sciences. On the contrary, the sciences owe much to literature in terms of humanizing the advances in their field. If it is not for literature, humans would be creating sciences that would be uncontrollable on the latter end. In another light, talking about literature and its state of being irrelevant to human life is a fallacy. Literature is under the discipline of humanities, and the root word of humanities is human thus literature is man-made. If humans are intellectual beings, they would not create something that has no intellectual value.

Accentuating the significance of literature to human life, Carlsen (1974) insists that throughout human history, we have unconsciously positioned a sense of significance on literature as to some extent above the worth of other things. Literature is, more often than not, highly valued as compared to the games of chance, more valued than landscape gardening, more valued than interior decoration and most of all it is more valued as compared to urban planning. In the lengthy duration of human history, literature goes beyond military victories, political institutions, and even economic accomplishment. The power of literature to an individual is still undiscovered for the reason that readers have always bear witness to the extraordinary fulfillment in reading and appreciating a well-crafted piece of literature but no one has been able to spell out precisely what it is.

The perception that literature is bourgeois in current times is a misleading notion. Formerly, yes, one might consider it bourgeois because there was no concept of “free education for all.” Education back then was only reserved for the middle or upper classes and part of that education is the study of literature and the classics. Hence, we can deduce that the control of literature is limited to the middle and upper classes. Now, education is not reserved for the middle or upper classes; and for this reason, everyone can be involved in the production and the consumption of literature. To give evidence to this phenomenon, we currently have writings or literature for the marginalized sectors like the leftist groups, Filipino migrant workers and empowered women.