Book Review

Why Literature Matters:

Permanence and the Politics of Reputation
Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of Reputation, by Glenn C.
Arbery; 255 pp. Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2001, $24.95.
Over the last decade or so, there has appeared an increasing number of books critical
of the profession of literary studies. Such criticism has typically been directed at literary
theory and its preoccupation with the politics of race, class, and gender. To a limited
extent, Glenn Arbery's Why Literature Matters: Permanence and the Politics of
Reputation can be classified as belonging to such a "genre." Early in the book, for
example, Arbery argues in favor of the "old-fashioned" idea, as he calls it, that literature
is a "mode of knowledge" with the potential to open up transcendent modes of
experience. Yet Why Literature Matters is so short on polemics and so long on incisive,
sometimes brilliant readings of works ranging from the poetry and fiction of Seamus
Heaney, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, and Emily Dickinson to Shakespeare's Othello and
Homer's Iliad, that such a characterization is insufficient at best and distorting at worst.
Notwithstanding its title, this book is devoted less to advancing a polemic about "why
literature matters" than to dramatizing, with performative power and grace, why most of
us, politically oriented or not, are already quite sure that it does.
Such performative power can be felt throughout Why Literature Matters, but its
presence is especially strong in the final, lengthy chapter on the Iliad, "The Sacrifice of
Achilles." Bringing to bear his training as a classical scholar, Arbery contends that
the Iliad is "about" a single event: the death or "sacrifice" of Achilles. Achilles, Arbery
notes, was not just the greatest hero of the Iliad. He was also the greatest hero of the
entire classical world: "Achilles has no rival in glory, either in the generation of heroes
before him (not even Herakles), or in the ages after him. According to Plutarch, Julius
Caesar wept because he had not accomplished as much as Alexander at the same
age, but Alexander the Great envied Achilles."
Why, then, does Arbery refer to Achilles' death as "sacrificial"? Drawing on a version of
the Greek myth whose source is Pindar rather than the more commonly cited Hesiod,
Arbery observes that Achilles' sacrificial death, which is not in fact narrated in
the Iliad but is everywhere taken for granted, was necessitated by Zeus' successful
plan to forestall a prophecy. That prophecy said that a son would be born to Zeus and
the goddess Thetis, who would overthrow the Olympian god as Zeus had overthrown
the Titans. Such a son, prophesized to be not the greatest of mortals but, much more,
the greatest of gods, would have been--should have been, from Achilles's justly
embittered standpoint -- Achilles. But in fact Zeus foiled the prophecy by marrying
Thetis off to a mere mortal, Peleus, thereby ensuring his own continued reign and
Achilles' eventual death.
It is the burden of Arbery's discussion to show not just that Achilles comes to accept
and even "will" his own death, but that the meaning of such sacrificial death is
embodied and given "presence" in the poetic form and language of the Iliad, including
especially the descriptions of Patrocles and Hector, each of whom "inhabits the
meaning of Achilles" by dying, successively, in Achilles' armor. Arbery goes so far as to
compare Achilles' sacrifice with Christ's, asserting that reading the Iliad "in ignorance of
the central importance of the marriage of Peleus and Thetis [is comparable] to reading

[Dante's] Inferno (where references to holy things are scarce) in ignorance of the
existence of Christ."
Arbery makes clear, however, that it is the differences, rather than the similarities, that
are most important in such a comparison. Those differences revolve around three
issues. First, whereas Christ is a deity who sacrifices himself for humanity, Achilles is a
mortal who sacrifices himself for the gods. Second, whereas humanity gains ultimate
salvation in the Afterlife as a result of Christ's crucifixion, Achilles finds nothing
redeeming in the "underworld" to which he is consigned after...

Why Does Literature Matter? By Frank B. Farrell. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press, 2004.
As a newer member of the profession, I have been struck by the diminishing role of
literature in the field of English. Literature seems to have been supplanted, for
numerous compelling reasons, from its privileged place at the center of the English
studies. Literary study has tended to become cultural studies, and literary theory,
critical theory. Required reading in many graduate courses tends to include fewer
works of fiction, poetry, and drama than works of philosophy, psychology, and
sociology. When literary texts are studied in postsecondary settings recently, more
often than not it seems that they serve as instances of the workings of cultures or as
illustrations of the operations of theory.
Because of my interest in this phenomenon, I found Frank Farrell's Why Does
Literature Matter? intriguing from its very first sentence. Farrell begins his book with
this observation: "To read widely in academic literary criticism of recent decades (that
written from 1970 to 2000) is to wonder why literature matters at all" (1). Farrell goes on
to describe the roles that literature is given in the field and what results from them:
The literary text appears as one more site, no more privileged than others, where
cultural codes linked with issues of power reveal themselves; or it is a site where
language seems an impersonal machinery generating meanings on its own, in a
manner that confounds the human writer's attempts to speak about the world or to
express intentional states. The result of either of these conceptions is that the
arrangements of the literary text itself, the precise way the author has placed particular
words in a particular order, seem to lose their importance. Authority passes to the critic,
who is able to read the hidden cultural codes or will set the textual machinery in motion
to generate effects that have little to do with the context of production or the work's
specific arrangements.

(1)
Farrell is certainly not the first to claim that the roles given literary texts in academic
settings of late tend to diminish the importance of literature, nor is he the first to call for
a reversal of this trend. What sets Farrell's book apart from other expressions of
concern over the recent direction of literary study is the way in which Farrell responds
to this trend. A brief look at some other treatments of the marginalization of literary texts
in academic study will provide a context for my evaluation of the significance of Farrell's
contribution.
One of those who have written about the role of literature in academic English studies
of the last few decades is Robert Scholes. In his book The Rise and Fall of English,
Scholes (1998: 13) considers the removal of literary texts from the privileged center of
English studies to be an inevitable necessity if the field is to regain its relevance in our

market-driven society, admitting that this change comes with a sense of loss for him.
Others hold a more optimistic view. Marjorie Perloff (2004: 17) acknowledges what may
be considered a "crisis in the humanities" but claims that training in the skills of reading
literary texts "will come back into favor for the simple reason that, try as one may, one
cannot eliminate the sheer jouissance or pleasure of the text." Yet others have
responded to the diminished role of literature with concern sufficient enough to produce
a new professional organization, the now eleven-year-old Association of Literary
Scholars and Critics (ALSC), established expressly to restore literary texts to the place
of primacy which they no longer seem to hold in their typical treatment in the Modern
Language Association. A recent ALSC publication argued that the importance of
"defending literary values on campus needs no justification by outcomes" because "our
literary inheritance is a value in itself, and the humanities professor has a responsibility
to it" (Bauerlein 2005: 7).
But is it enough to appeal to the value of "our literary inheritance" without wrestling with
the theoretical developments that have called it into question or attempting...

Kira Sara

Needing to Read like Needing to Eat:

Making the Power of Literary Reading Available
to Students of Literature
Christina Vischer Bruns, Why Literature? The Value of Literary Reading and
What it Means for Teaching. New York: Continuum 2011. xvi, 159 S. [Price:
EUR 20,99]. ISBN: 978-1-4411-2465-4.

1. Introduction
Why Literature? is aimed at teachers and researchers in tertiary education. Even
though the question why literature matters has frequently been addressed in this
context, [1] Vischer Bruns offers an unusual approach. Two aspects set her publication
apart from most others: Firstly, she seeks to establish a conception of the value of
literary reading that explicitly resonates with what she calls pleasure reading (2). The
personal significance of encounters with literary texts has received little academic
acknowledgement so far and Vischer Bruns endeavours to make personal reactions
fruitful for academic enquiry. Secondly, she treats the question about the value of
literature as a pedagogical one. She strives to remedy a climate of reclining interest in
literary reading and classrooms full of reluctant readers. How can literature produce a
compulsion to read in learners that feels like the need to eat (8)?

2. Aims and Framework of Why Literature?

Vischer Bruns identifies a calamitous gap in the teaching of literature: So far, didactic
approaches to teaching literature are not based on a clear conception and articulation
of why literature matters in life at all. Literature courses are not explicit about what they

aim at doing and why. Therefore literary education is not as effective as it could be,
possibly even contributing to the tenuous role literature holds in society at present.
Vischer Bruns aims at developing a conception of the value of literary reading that on
the one hand can function as a solid foundation for literature courses, and on the other
enables powerful transformative experiences through reading. She seeks to examine
and reveal what makes literary reading personally meaningful and attempts to close the
gap between academic and personal reading. Subsequently she investigates how such
a conception should influence literary teaching, and what pedagogical principles can be
derived from that foundation.
Although she takes other theoretical approaches into account, the theoretical core of
her conception of literatures value are object relations theory, especially the work of
psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott, and reader-response criticism, especially L.
Rosenblatts approach.

3. Chapter Summary
3.1. Reading as a Formative Experience
In chapter 1, Vischer Bruns examines some recent contributions to the question of the
value of literature and points out that they either see the value in aspects that overlook
pleasurable reading experiences, or articulate literary pleasures without explaining the
benefit of such experiences. In the course of the chapter she develops a perspective
on the matter that accounts for both, the satisfaction and the human benefit of literary
reading.
She argues that through reading experiences of shock, recognition and enchantment
literature has the potential to change readers. Literature can shake us out of our
idiosyncratic perspectives, give form to experiences we could not grasp otherwise, and
take us out of ourselves to dwell in imaginary worlds. Thus gaining distance from the
empirical world, we gain the ability to critique and potentially change it.
Since other cultural or non-cultural experiences, like watching a movie, listening to a
piece of music or practicing meditation, hold the same potential, Vischer Bruns further
seeks to define what sets literature apart. She argues that it is living into the
characters, adopting their voices, inhabiting their identities, submitting to a texts
language, and trying on a new way of being in the world that makes literary reading
more potent than other experiences. Literature is primarily experienced within oneself.
Without sounds or pictures given, it engages and mobilises all senses simultaneously.
Furthermore, Vischer Bruns uses F. Farrells conception of literary reading as a
ritualized practice (24) to find additional ground for literatures specific value. [2] In
Farrells work, literature offers readers a safe context to establish contact with psychic
or cultural patterns that might otherwise be threatening to the self. The full extent of
human possibility can be witnessed from the protected space of a story or a poem. We
simultaneously enter a psychic state comparable to those of early self-formation in
young childhood, when the boundaries between fiction and reality, between self and

other, between inner and outer experience are temporarily blurred. Just like in
childhood, these states allow us to rework ourselves, our relationships to others, and
our way of being in the world. She concludes that it is the safe and ritualised return to
early self-formation that we seek when our need to read feels as urgent as a need to
eat.
Farrells work on the formative role of reading paves the way for Winnicotts object
relations theory to become the theoretical core of Vischer Bruns conception of
literatures value. In Winnicotts terms, formative experiences happen in a transitional
or third space a middle state between self and world, inner and
outer experience. [3]Vischer Bruns argues that literary texts are prime candidates to
become transitional objects in Winnicotts sense. In her argumentation Vischer Bruns
echoes L. Rosenblatts conception of a work of literature being what arises in the
transaction between the text and the reader, [4] thus establishing reader-response
criticism as the second theoretical column of her work.
Concluding from a teachers perspective, Vischer Bruns points out that experiences in
transitional space are crucial for training the flexibility needed in on-going relationships
between individuals, between individuals and an ever changing environment, as well as
between cultures. Since not all readers automatically have access to such experiences,
teaching of literature has to focus on facilitating formative experiences. The benefits
originate at an individual level, but the effects impact society as a whole.
3.2. Exploring Transitional Space
In chapter 2 Vischer Bruns investigates what kind of reading is required in order to
make a text available as a transitional object. Informed by the insights of some
exemplary teachers of literature as well as heavily influenced by P. Ricur, [5] she
determines the necessary reading process as consisting of two moves: the immersive
and the reflective move. Before a text can become a transitional object, readers must
allow themselves to become immersed in the text, to let go of their sense of self. At the
same time, readers need to be able to step back and reflect on how the text managed
to draw them in. Further following Ricur, Vischer Bruns examines the interaction
between immersive and reflective reading and concludes that they keep each other
from working. Same as Ricur, she then suggests to move from an oppositional
relationship to a creative interdependence of both moves in a three-stage process of
reading: An initial stage of fast immersive reading should be followed by a reflective
phase. Critical reading can solve questions that arose from the first reading, allowing a
deeper immersion into the world of the text in a third reading. Although the stages
might in reality turn out to be more fluid, especially the last two possibly occurring at the
same time, she speculates that the dialectic between immersion and reflection may
become the key of literary pedagogy.
Applied to the teaching of literature, Vischer Bruns draws a number of conclusions from
her suggested reading process. Firstly, students ability to initially immerse themselves
cannot be assumed. If students experience of a text does not surpass seeing black
letters on a page, further work with the text makes no sense at all. Critical tasks at this
stage would only close them off from formative reading experiences. Instead,

facilitating immersion by means of drama, art or visual support becomes crucial much
more crucial than working with the text on a language level. Secondly, the direction of
the following reflective phase has to be based on students initial readings, with their
experience providing the subject of their analytical scrutiny. Apart from that, the
reflective stance may be needed if the text remains ultimately puzzling and not
accessible for students immersion. Vischer Bruns suggests a supportive role of
reflective reading: It develops immersive reading, while immersive reading envelopes
critical reading.
In conclusion, she points out the main limitation of her approach. Students may be
unwilling to immerse themselves, caused by a fear of derealising (76) themselves
through reading. She acknowledges that the transformative capacity of literary reading
can cause harm instead of good for particular readers of particular texts in particular
contexts. Teachers have to take care when encouraging students to take risks with
texts in such vulnerable territory.
3.3. Immersive Reading tte--tte with Classroom Reality
In chapter 3 Vischer Bruns examines how recent approaches to literary instruction as
well as the schooling environment help or challenge the development of her particular
pedagogy. She surveys publications on the teaching of literature in the post-secondary
sector as well as a few written for the high school context.
Vischer Bruns sorts the said publications into two categories. One group mainly
perceives the teaching of literature as the instructors activity that students observe, the
other teaches literature through engaging students themselves. In the first group, she
lists publications that focus on literary works and on ways of reading them. The main
stance of reading here is the analytical, critical, distancing mode. The main mode of
teaching consists of lectures that model the teachers reading practices for students.
The focus lies on the teachers learning and there is little reference to students at all.
According to Vischer Bruns, these approaches intrinsically prevent transformative
experiences. In the second group, teachers focus on the skills students need for literary
reading and aim at handing students the tools to produce their own readings. The
examples of student involvement Vischer Bruns lists include posing students questions
with answers that depend upon their personal reading, preparing their own
performances when reading plays, or students acting as experts during flash
presentations. In these ways students make the texts their own and according to
Vischer Bruns they arrive at a familiarity and engagement with the text that can
potentially foster the immersive experience of transitional space. Even though
involvement is a prerequisite for transformative reading, not all tasks found in these
publications were conductive to it, especially if they prioritised ideological critique. Only
one approach, Sheridan Blaus Literature Workshop, [6] satisfies Vischer Bruns
conditions of allowing reading to happen in transitional space. Blaus work, however,
lacks the justification that Vischer Bruns offers.
Her assessment of the school context equally arrives at a sobering conclusion. A great
number of aspects limit students opportunity to use works of literature as transitional
objects, amongst them students and teachers previous reading habits, a testing and

grading environment that influences students behaviour in class and promotes

conformity, the tendency to study and talk about literature the way that other subjects
are studied, the scheduling and decorum required in school, the need for a
manageable curriculum, and a speech genre in the classrooms that is hard to change.
Altogether these factors turn schools and colleges into environments that are highly
challenging, if not hostile, to transformative reading.
3.4. Suggestions for Teaching Literature
In chapter 4 Vischer Bruns outlines the pedagogical implications of her approach and
proposes some principles and ideas to intentionally welcome immersive reading into
post-secondary literary education.
The principles of teaching within her framework were partly outlined in the previous
chapters. A new consideration is her suggestion to use the reflective stance as a
means for students to reclaim some textual power. They need to find out how literature
works on readers and be explicitly taught about the formative power of literature. In that
way they can realise what lies behind their own preferences for transitional objects. In
another principle she notes that culturally distant texts can cause an initial refusal in
students to immerse themselves and thereby bring the negotiation of otherness into the
foreground. Instructors can reveal the students reading habits as culturally biased and
promote a reading on the texts own terms. Furthermore, she deals with the
complication of establishing students as full participants in making meaning. Even if the
students reading is blatantly wrong, it has to be the starting point for didactic decisions.
Students shape the course, teachers only create conditions and provide broad
questions, activities and assignments for exploring them.
Subsequently, Vischer Bruns dedicates a section to considering the students. She
suggests enquiring specifically who the students are, what they bring to the classroom,
what their previous experiences with transitional objects are, and what previous
schooling experience they have. Falling back into previous habits should be prevented
by providing explicit explanations about the shift in roles about to take place. She also
suggests setting classroom activities where students adopt new roles and creating
contexts where traditional speech genres do not apply.
The final ideas for teaching literature Vischer Bruns suggests are practical by nature.
She usually starts her own literature classes by asking questions such as why was
this work influential?, why should it be read?, or why does literature matter?
(128). For answering, she has students work with a multi-part reading journal that
includes reactions, notes and reflections. After their first immersive reading, small
groups share their reactions. The teacher identifies emerging confusion and questions
and leads class discussions about it. In assignments Vischer Bruns highlights the
importance of choice for the students. They work on whatever struck them (145) in
reading the literary text and she lets them solve a puzzling feature without using
outside sources. They then conduct research projects on topics related to the text,
before they write a reflection on their learning process. The assessment that follows
consists of a marked essay on the initial course question. In order to allow a final
immersion, she challenges the students with an artistic expression. They can either

internalise the text through memorising parts of it, or re-envision it through creative
writing, ceramics, photography, or painting.

4. A Final Appraisal of Why Literature?

Christina Vischer Bruns work is highly readable. She situates herself very clearly as a
teacher and researcher and reveals her perspective as what it is, not assuming more
claim to truth than an individual perspective allows. Following a very stringent
argument, she guides the reader strongly and with a clear voice. Speaking in her own
terms, her text facilitates immersive reading on all levels.
Taking a reflective stance, Vischer Bruns work leaves a mixed impression. The first two
chapters testify her determination not to stop at preconceived notions about the value
of literary reading but to establish a conception that embeds pleasure reading in a
sound theoretical framework. Digging ever deeper, she arrives at convincing results. In
the school context her focus on pleasure reading seems adequate, especially since
she manages to illustrate how her approach to reading can not only produce motivated,
but also critical readers.
However, several aspects of Vischer Bruns work pose problems. In her presentation of
previous approaches to literary instruction in chapter 3 she seems to read her idea of
transitional objects into the publications she quotes, bending them to either fit or
challenge her approach. The result is therefore merely a confirmation of the
perspective she started out from, not a development or alternation of her approach.
Nevertheless, the first three chapters build up a substantial amount of suspense. After
pointing out how difficult it is to change academic habits and how the school
environment challenges her suggested approach, the weight of her work seems to rest
on the final chapter. What is a fitting pedagogical practice then? Chapter 4 opens with
the anticlimactic admission that her principles and ideas are preliminary and
provisional, and that further work is needed. The suggested pedagogical practice
remains vague.
Even though chapter 4 is only intended as a signpost for possible developments, it
seems that it could have benefitted from a stronger connection to a theoretical
framework, her own at the very least. The carefully developed three-stage model from
chapter 2 is broken into more complex steps in Vischer Bruns suggestions and
appears to pose problems in practical teaching. In light of available concepts of
scaffolding or creative engagement with an unknown text, it also remains unclear why
she seems to leave students to grapple with the text on their own in their first
immersive reading stage. Later stages are equally anachronistic in their methodical
choices. The kind of work Vischer Bruns suggests is still largely based on individual
writing, discussions, student presentations and occasional lectures, even if the lectures
take on a different role in her teaching process. She means to work with students initial
frustration productively and generously accepts random or blatantly wrong (137) first
readings into her teaching process, but the use of it remains dubious if she then has to
use a lecture to put it right. Some of the works she quoted in chapter 3 showed a much
greater methodical range to accompany students reading processes, immersive and

reflective reading alike, but she does not seem to use their potential for her own
teaching. Rather than focussing on procedures that are part of any experienced
teachers professional expertise anyway (like assessing the students background or
creating a suitable atmosphere in class), Vischer Bruns could have greatly increased
the impact of her practical suggestions through the inclusion of theoretical work on
story, on action- and production oriented approaches to literary reading, on creative
writing, or on drama methods for example.
At a second immersive read, the merit of Vischer Bruns to have established a
theoretical foundation for pleasure reading and a solid possible base for teaching
literature still rings true. It is helpful that she defines what lies at the very heart of the
matter of literary reading as a contribution to the ongoing discussion. The use of literary
texts as transitional objects may not become the one unanimous reason why to read
literature, if such could ever exist, but her conception inspires the debate to include a
new direction. Vischer Bruns work is not likely to have a practical impact until her
suggested change of direction has found its concrete expression in the classrooms.
Her open request for readers to develop her practical work will hopefully be taken up.
Kira Sara, M.A.
Georg-August-Universitt Gttingen
Seminar fr Englische Philologie

Notes
[1] Cf. e.g. Mark Edmundson, Why Read?, New York 2004; Mark William Roche, Why Literature Matters in
the 21st Century, New Haven, Conn. 2004; Dennis J. Sumara, Why Reading Literature in School Still
Matters: Imagination, Interpretation, Insight, Mahwah, NJ 2002. [zurck]
[2] Cf. Frank B. Farrell, Why Does Literature Matter?, Ithaca, NY 2004. [zurck]
[3] Cf. Donald W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, London 1971. [zurck]
[4] Cf. Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration, New York 51995; L.R., The Reader, the Text, the
Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, Carbondale, IL 1994. [zurck]
[5] Cf. Paul Ricur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B.
Thompson, Evanston, IL 1991. [zurck]
[6] Cf. Sheridan Blau, The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and Their Readers, Portsmouth, NH
2003. [zurck]

2013-04-12
JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990