“As the author points out, many do not appreciate the relevance of the study of literature. At a cordial meeting with academic deans at Harvard University, English professor Marjorie Garber and other professors in the “humanities” were asked what questions their respective disciplines answered. Garber responded that the value of literary study comes from asking questions, not finding answers. She says “the rich possibility of interpretation—the happy resistance of the text to ever by fully known and mastered—is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture.” In justifying the study of literature as a legitimate field of study, Garber believes what literary scholars can offer readers of all text, not just literature, is a way of asking literary questions about the way something means, rather than what it means, or even why. She does not believe these other questions should be ignored, but that the emphasis should be on the way of expression.
Most of the book is a high-level survey of topics one would find in an undergraduate literature program, with examples galore, a number of which would already be familiar to literature aficionados.
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