Consider some of the following questions for Monday's class:
* In essence, why is literature so hard to define? Why can almost any definition of literature be applied to other forms as well?
* Why is literature like a "weed"? Why might one person's weed be another person's flower?
* Can literature be propaganda, according to Culler? Why or why not? How might this relate to Kant's phrase, "purposiveness without purpose"?
* How does literature call attention to itself as language in ways different from other forms of writing?
* How does literature use time, identity, and place in ways unique to other forms of writing? For example, why is a novel's use of "I" different than someone writing an e-mail or a text?
* How do aesthetics play into defining or identifying something as literature? Why is this most often the way people either defend or dismiss a literary work?
* Culler writes that "what it implicitly says about making sense relates to the way it itself goes about making sense." What does this mean, and how does it relate to intertextuality?
* How does literature, more than other forms of writing, both conform to and resist accepted forms and notions? (also, how might this relate to the idea of originality and copies)?
* Culler suggests that "the more the universality of literature is stressed, the more it may have a national function." How might this work with a specific novel or poem (he hints at Jane Austen in the chapter).
* Does literature have the power to ennoble us and make us better human beings? Is that an outdated (or naive) notion, or is it one of the chief qualities of literature?
* On the other hand, is literature a tool the rulers use to oppress the masses or to keep them servile? How could literature function as a way to teach people their place in society?
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