What is literature? And... Who cares about it?

  As a student of English language and English literature, it was something unavoidable that some day I would have to go into this kind of theoretical stupid questions about literature.

  Two years ago I had the “pleasure” of being registered for a subject called The theory of literature. It didn't sound so bad at first; I believed it would be just something harder to study - more than subjects like Spanish language I or English I, for instance-. What I didn't expect was a three month programme just about this question: What is literature and what is the importance of what is it? ------ “Great”...

After losing our time talking once and again about the same question without receiving any acceptable answer for months, we finally entered the real subject. My question is: was it necesary? Do we need to question this for so long? Couldn't be just an introductory question for the first lesson?

  The thing is, that it must be more important than I thought because when I arrived this year to London, one of my modules started with the same question: What is literature?---- “Are you kidding me? I went once through this, I do not want to repeat the experience”. Thankfully, English people seem to be more reasonable at this point and -yes!- they have planned that in just two sesions this question should be fairly discussed.

  My point is: I think questioning things that are suposedly to be stablished is really useful– what literature is, in this case – and that is a great help to have a teacher helping you through that process. But, ah, there's the main point: the teacher is just a guidance help. We do not need to be guided through the same question for a whole semester. Once the matter has been put on the table, let the student make his/her own questions. You guide, they choose. And if you need to cover empty hours, do not waste our time. We are not rubish, we are people and just because we are students it doesn't mean that we've got nothing else to do with our life. Therefore I wonder not only what is literature, but also what is studying literature nowadays?