The Value of Studying Literature

A Review of the English Higher Education Curriculum in Sweden

Abstract

The article addresses the academic study of English literature as an educational project, with special focus on knowledge mediation and its vindication. It is based on an examination of the academic curricula from all universities and university colleges that offered English studies in Sweden in 2016. The article shows that, despite local variations at the level of theme, there was a widespread consensus nationally about the goals of literary studies and largely also about the underlying conceptions of literature and of the value of its study. The latter, it concludes, relied mainly on the perceived affordances of literary reading and on the potential of literature to provide worldly knowledge.