The Functions of Literature
So, you may ask, what is the use of studying the world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance. In the imagination our own beliefs are also only possibilities, but we can also see the possibilities in the beliefs of others. Bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them as possibilities.
— Northrup Frye, pp.77-78
Two Great Goals
Plato wouldn't let poets into his Utopia, the Republic, because they lie about things. Fair enough; most writers do lie. Many authors have, in the ensuing 2,500 years, tried to justify literature, or explain why it should be a part of anyone's life. The most succinct expression of the goals of literature was probably done by Sir Philip Sidney, in The Defence of Poesy, written around 1580 but not published until after his death in 1595. In it he lays out a definition of poetry that holds two major points:
Poetry therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle terms it in the word mimesis—that is to say a representing, counter-feiting, or figuring forth to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture with this end, to teach and delight.
That sentence usually gets boiled down to just two ends, or goals, for writing: to delight, and to instruct. We can see this more clearly if we look at a typical textbook, say, the second edition of Principles of Biology, by Robert Brooker, Widmaier, Linda Graham, and Peter Stiling (2018). I'm sure that Brooker and his co-writers worked very hard to create a text that is clear, concise, and informative, But I'm betting that you don't curl up in bed with a copy of their textbook and your drink of choice, settling in for a good read. The end of a textbook isn't to make the reader happy, or amazed, or moved. It's to impart knowledge, in the most expedient way possible. It may not be something that grabs your interest and holds it, but it's not designed to do that. I'm not going to trash the writing in this book, since I don't even know it (it was the first hit in a search for "typical textbook"), but most textbooks aren't known for their deathless prose.
At the opposite end of the reading spectrum, you also don't sit down with something like Mad Magazine (may it rest in peace) or visit a site like The Onion thinking that you're going to learn anything. The purpose of these works is not to delight and instruct, but just to delight. You're supposed to laugh, then forget about it, because most of the material in places like these is insubstantial.
The middle ground, between these two extremes, is occupied by literature. Let's look at a typical novel, something like Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847). It's not a particular favorite of mine (again, it was the first hit in a search for "typical novel"), and I'm not going to praise Brontë's writing in it. You don't read it thinking you'll get a handle on 19th-century science. Rather, you read it for pleasure, for the delight it can give you. And along the way, you learn about standing up for yourself, not giving in to social conventions, the necessity of patience, the value of sincerity, and the burden of responsibility. It's not like all these things are laid out as guidelines or some set of commandments. They're imbued within the text, and leavened with the delight of reading a well-crafted story.
With that in mind, let's look at some of the functions literature performs.
Common Ground
The first role of literature is basic: it gives us a common reference point for discussions. Yes, there are plenty of other things to debate, discuss, and ponder, like politics, current events, friends, family, and so on. But all of these others things are packed with emotion, and charged with vested interests. Literature, in comparison, disassociates itself from real life so that debates aren’t taken personally or warped by our unique perspectives and interests.
So let’s say we want to talk about the odd, funny, and sometimes destructive emotions that seem to govern teenagers. We could talk about a mutual friend and his particular situation, but we'll probably end up offending him or others. This is where fiction performs its first function. In order to get at the same issue we could instead talk about a character like Shakespeare's Romeo. Neither of us know him personally, and he lives in a world that neither of us have any stake in.
Modeling
Once there was a boy who lived in a village. He liked to call out "Wolf!" and laugh as the villagers ran around in a panic, only to realize that there was no wolf at all. One day, the boy was playing in the forest, and ran into an actual wolf. He cried "Wolf! Wolf!" but no one believed him anymore. Everyone thought he was lying again, and no one came to save him.
Fiction like that of Dickens, Olive Schreiner, or Richard Wright gives us the details about the kinds of suffering being endured by people to whom we have previously not attended. Fiction like that of Choderlos de Laclos, Henry James, or Nabokov give us details about what sorts of cruelty we ourselves are capable of, and thereby let us redescribe ourselves. That is why the novel, the movie, and the TV program have, gradually but steadily, replaced the sermon and the treatise as the principal vehicles of moral change and progress.
— Richard Rorty, p. xvi
How do we learn what's right and what's wrong? Or, even more to the point, what virtues we should aspire to, and what vices we should avoid? In short, how does a culture instill its mores and ethics in its members?
Although there are a number of dissenting opinions in the field of developmental psychology, there is a consensus that the main way that both children and adults develop their habits, sensitivities, and social reflexes is by modeling those we see and hear. Unfortunately, we are rarely ever surrounded by paragons of virtue in real life. This is where literature performs its second function. Stories allow us to develop and shape character education, while engaging our interest as well. Humans are story-telling animals; we spend billions on movies, TV series, video games, and books. We don't do this purely for enjoyment, but also for inspiration.
Experience
Personally, I grew up in a city in Pennsylvania during the 1960s and 1970s. The experiences I had then, specific to place, time, personality, opportunity, and the randomness of the universe, shaped me in ways that I can't begin to understand. But they didn't give me an experience of rural life, or life in the American South, or in South Africa, or at the South Pole.
However, through literature, and the vicarious experience of another time, culture, place, or life, I have the chance to overcome the limitations of my own subjectivity, along with those imposed by my sex, age, social and economic condition, and the times in which I live. Literary characters offer me immediate access to a wide range of human experiences I might otherwise never know. As a reader I can observe these characters' private and public lives, and become privy to their innermost thoughts, feelings, and motivations. It is the very intimacy of this access that explains why psychologists have traditionally found imaginative literature a rich source for case studies to illustrate theories of personality and behavior.
No, this is not a direct and immediate experience, but the presentation of an experience, one in which I immerse myself through my imagination.
Seeing The Other
This luxury that literature affords us, to see things through another's eyes, helps us perform some fundamental human activities. We all know people who use others, who treat other people as objects or tools to be used to further their own selfish ends. And we know people who do their best to see others, who recognize that other people's goals and dreams are just as important to them as ours are to us.
Martin Buber, an existentialist philosopher, in his book Ich und Du (I and Thou), classifies the first type of relationship as "I-It," where we (the "I") treat the world—and the people in it—as objects to be used to further our own ends. Treating an actual object as an object is fine; you wouldn't want to develop an intimate relationship with your textook, for instance. But treating other people as objects, "object-ifying" them, denies them their own subjectivity, dehumanizes all those with whom we come in contact, and creates an insular, isolated life for us.
The "I-Thou" relationship, on the other hand, sees the Other not as an object, but as another subject, in the same way that we are subjects. It doesn't interrogate, classify, or develop relationships with others based solely on what they can do for us.
Literature, and especially fiction, allows us to "try on" the experiences of others. More importantly, it allows us to see others' reactions to those events. We see their subjective responses to the happenings in their lives, and thus see others as sujects just like us. Literature often gives us keen insights into another’s world, allowing us to get brief glimpses through unfamiliar eyes. From Huckleberry Finn to The Grapes of Wrath to Frozen, we get a chance to see a perspective we would otherwise never experience. There are a number of psychological studies demonstrating that we create empathetic connections with characters in fiction, and then transfer that skill to other people around us. Steven Pinker, in Better Angels of Our Nature, argues that the increase in literacy, reading, and otherwise consuming fiction is one of the drivers of the observed decrease in violence over the past few decades and centuries.
Being The Other
Understanding others' mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies. This skill is known as Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc.—to oneself, and to others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one's own.
The core concepts involved in ToM are beliefs, desires, and intentions, which are used to understand why someone acts in a certain way or to predict how someone will act. Overall, ToM involves understanding another person's knowledge, beliefs, emotions, and intentions and using that understanding to navigate social situations.
We don't know much about what fosters this skill in us. But multiple recent experiments have shown that reading literary fiction leads to better performance on tests of affective (feeling) ToM and cognitive (thinking) ToM. Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.
Frye, Northrup. The Educated Imagination. Indiana UP, 1964.
Kloo D., Perner, J., & Gritzer, T. "Object-Based Set-Shifting in Preschoolers: Relations to Theory of Mind." Self and Social Regulation: Social Interaction and the Development of Social Understanding and Executive Functions, edited by B. W. Sokol, U. Müller, J. I. M. Carpendale, A. R. Young, & G. Iarocci, Oxford UP, 2010, pp. 193-217.
Pickering, James H., and Jeffrey D. Hoeper. Concise Companion to Literature. Macmillan, 1981.
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge UP, 1989.
Thompson, Brittany M. "Theory of Mind: Understanding Others in a Social World." Psychology Today, 3 July 2017, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/socioemotional-success/201707/theory-mind-understanding-others-in-social-world