Dr. Anthony Esolen: On the Academic Hostility to Great Literature

Great literature was killed off for many in the academy in the 1980s.

Its death came along with the demands of political correctness, the seeds of which are now becoming weeds that are choking every breath of freedom out of society.

As for the new branch of study, rather than fostering wonder, the study of literature became the study of an ideological relic, a social construct of the particular power group of its day, i.e. ‘dead white European males’.

With such a shoddy and shallow understanding, it is little wonder that fewer and fewer wished to study it.  Where it was taught, the teaching of literature soon came to turn on whether voices could be empowered to represent a form of diversity identified by those committed to identity politics.

What was lost was the very reason for studying literature at all, of devoting the considerable time and expense to such an impractical pursuit in one’s formative years.  It also ignored the one reason why governments might be willing to subsidize its study:  it served as a foundation for a virtuous citizenry.

Here are some of the words that were used to describe it in days of yore:

‘A tradition of thought extending back to Milton, Sidney, and Aristotle holds that literature imparts wisdom. With respect to the kind of wisdom that governs human conduct, poetry promotes a grasp of reality superior to other ways of knowing in its combination of immediacy, lucidity, practicality, sensitivity to refinements, capacity to shape the affections, and adequacy to the whole.

This conviction guides literary study at every level of the curriculum pursued at the University of Dallas. The program in literature provides a course of study in those authors who best exemplify the capacity of imagination to grasp truth.’

The true study of literature retains such virtues, virtues that are much needed in our day.

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