On Literature

Recently, I purchased a few volumes from the Funk and Wagnalls Pocket Library of the World’s Essential Knowledge published in 1929. Published prior to the Great Depression, World War II, the Civil Rights movement and other major events of the 20th century, I was curious about the flavor of ideas that were contained therein. To my surprise, on many points it sounded as if it may have published yesterday. But that’s for a different post or posts.

I’d like to quote here just a few sentences from the volume on Literature that summarize its very fundamentals and its value.

Literature is a record of thoughts and feelings of our predecessors and contemporaries in the world. It is the intensification and clarification of the experience of the human race by those possessing unusual insight and power. … Authors have been particularly gifted men, who have seen more clearly and felt more deeply than their fellow men.

A mirror of human nature – can the value of literature be possibly overestimated? How is it that so many young people under-appreciate it?

An English teacher must not only teach but inspire.