Steve Watson

Towards a ‘Virtue Theory’ for Literature (1)

May 31, 2026 – 9:02 am

It is often asked why we should read; more specifically, why we should read the classics or ‘fine literature,’ by which is meant generally poetry, plays, and prose narratives of various kinds – these days especially, ‘serious’ novels. The question is motivated by the fact that reading this literature is claimed to be a good thing and that those who do so either are admired for it or should be admired, that the failure to do so is felt to be a personal fault, and that it is even argued that society should take an interest in encouraging such reading. In short, it is held to have real value, and the only question is, what is the value?

Bad Reasons to Read Literature

The usual range of answers to this question are pretty unconvincing. Consider this entirely representative list with attached brief critiques:

1. They Provide Timeless Insights Into Human Nature
   • Notoriously, the ‘insights’ offered are banal (or absurd,) and authors have no particular qualifications to offer them anyway. Such insights would be better sourced from a psychology or anthropology textbook.
2. Classic Literature Enhances Critical Thinking Skills
   • There is no good evidence for this. Some literature may require greater cognitive effort to appreciate, but it rarely involves the assessment of argument validity, statistical reasoning, or the identification of plausible causal relations.
3. They Expand Your Vocabulary and Language Skills
   • Marginally, possibly, by giving examples of ‘good’ writing. Actual improvement in language competence comes mostly from practice at producing, not consuming, language; by writing and speaking, not reading and listening.
4. Classic Books Offer Historical and Cultural Context
   • The context usually has to be provided by the Introduction to classic texts. Being set in foreign times and climes is rather a handicap to appreciation than an advantage. Nor does mere acquaintance with an alien context necessarily bring true comprehension.
5. They Develop Empathy and Emotional Intelligence
   • This is highly unlikely. If anything, the connection goes the other way: people who are already interested in people are more likely to develop an interest in reading about other people. The ‘empathy’ and ‘EI,’ where they aren’t delusions, were there first.
6. Classic Literature Provides Intellectual Stimulation and Mental Exercise
   • So do many things. That is not a particular quality of classic/fine literature.
7. They Connect You to Literary Traditions and References
   • True, but trivial – and probably a bit circular.
8. Classic Books Offer Escape from Modern Digital Overload
   • Any book can do this. So can a crossword or a walk in the country.
9. They Tackle Universal Themes That Remain Relevant Today
   • But in what does this ‘tackling’ consist? And what does it matter that they do? Literary treatments of these universal themes (poverty, war, relations between the sexes, etc.) are rarely of great significance intellectually, they do not help us better understand them, they do not help us form wise policies to address them.
10. Reading Classics Enhances Personal Growth and Self-Reflection
    • What evidence could there be for this? What does it even mean?

The Two Roots of Literary Appreciation

A curious fact about these lists of reasons justifying the reading of fine or classic literature  – which are all essentially utilitarian or otherwise external to the literature itself – is that, even if we accept that they don’t succeed as justifications, we are no less inclined to defend the worth of reading such works. This will be true of any such external justification of literature, because such justifications are simply misguided: the only justification required for reading at all is that we enjoy it. The problem that remains is to explain how we justify valuing some literature above others by using only reasons or criteria of evaluation that are internal to the literature itself – but this is not an unusual problem in the arts, the same problem will be found in the visual arts or music, for example.

In this case, I propose that a possible solution requires that we begin by recognising two sources of pleasure that are universal amongst humans and that seem to be relevant to the question at hand: storytelling, and language-play.

1. There now seems to be good evidence that we are in fact hard-wired to process information more effectively when it comes in the form of a narration: more brain areas are activated corresponding to a virtual experience of the narrated events, memories are more reliably and completely formed (Haven, 2007) (presumably, because the narration provides a coordinating context for the embedded facts,) oxytocin, a chemical related to empathetic identification, may be released (Zak, 20013,) mirror neurons are activated so that emotional engagement is enhanced (Iacoboni, 2009.)

   Explanations for this fact are generally offered in terms of evolutionary psychology and the advantages to be gained through such enhanced effectiveness of transmission (Boyd, 2009; Carroll, 2012; Gottschall, 2012,) but there are also explanations in terms of displays of creativity and competence and all that that might signal to potential mates and competitors about the storyteller’s fitness (something like an intellectual peacock’s tail.) For our purposes it doesn’t really matter, except that as a cultural response to an evolutionary strategy, we might expect there to be certain conditions and limits and characteristics imposed on that cultural response so that stories that violated them would be less well-rewarded by positive responses in the audience.

   Possible examples of such inherent requirements of a story are those elements identified as universal preferences: a plot structure of setup, conflict, and resolution (note that an unresolved conflict is known to create cognitive tension as an instance of the Zeigarnik Effect,) identifiable characters, a coherent emotional setting, etc. The fact that we cannot conceive of a successful story that violates these strictures may be a consequence of our evolved storytelling faculty, or it might simply be that they are objectively necessary elements of any narration. Again, it hardly matters why these strictures may apply, it only matters that they do apply.
   

2. Storytelling, of course, requires language, which is also universal amongst humans. Language is, however, a skill that has to be developed and then perfected for real competence: it does not simply arrive at its full and final competence like sight or hearing or breathing. In this respect it is much like other motor, cognitive, and social skills that characterize normally competent humans. Like those other skills, the development of language in its early stages is marked by creative, rule-testing, rule-breaking, repetitive, competence-testing, etc. exercises that constitute what is called play (Gras,1901.) Children play at physical sports in order to hone physical competences; children play at language use in order to hone linguistic competence. (This, and much else of interest, is discussed in Benítez‐Burraco et al. 2025.) The evolutionarily derived motivation for all this is simply that play is experienced as enjoyable: play gives pleasure.

   The pleasure to be found in play does not disappear at the end of the developmental phase, though its expression and its forms of appreciation do alter. Adults still find enjoyment in play, even if for them the opportunities to indulge in play are fewer and social approval for such indulgence is limited. Some adults will, of course, continue to treat such play as worthwhile in itself – just as some adults continue to play children’s games like tennis or rugby – but adults in general are more inclined to find the pleasure in play in the appreciation of play by others: some will play and others will enjoy their playing. The significance of the play-element, in Western culture at least, is well covered in Huizinga’s (1950) Homo Ludens.

   The important point to note here is that not all non-standard usages of language can count as play, and not all are therefore going to be appreciated by whatever innate mechanisms are at work when we regard language play. Benitez-Burraco et al (op. cit. p. 4) make the relevant comment that:

Given that the concept of play is quite elusive, it is of course difficult to assess which uses of language involve some sort of play, not to say which structural aspects of language are motivated by such putative playing function. In general, language play concerns playing with linguistic forms, as well as the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language (Crystal 1998; Cook 1997, 2000). It therefore has a formal dimension, on the one hand, as well as a semantic and pragmatic dimension on the other hand. It is this formal side of playing with language that is captured when talking about the ‘aesthetic’ use of language, or, put differently, the formal dimension of language play is a form of ‘aesthetic action’ (Albuquerque and Emilee Moore 2024).

Recognising Excellence in Literature

Literature is a performance of language use (of a particular kind) and has natural elements of assessment as a performance of a certain kind. (They may not be the only elements of assessment, but they are the fundamentals.) In the particular case of fine literature as we are understanding it, those natural elements of assessment are exactly the elements of literature determined to be relevant to the two sources of pleasure in literature that we have identified: storytelling and language play. Excellence in literature will be judged by the degree to which excellence is displayed in those elements.

Two questions are immediately suggested by this claim. The first is how we might precisely identify the elements to be assessed, and the second is how we might specify the criteria according to which the excellence in each element of the literary performance might be judged. Consider these in turn.

1. It might be thought that this is essentially an empirical question, since the elements involved are ultimately those determined to be so by observation of actual literary performance. In the case of storytelling, it has been observed that plot structure, characterization, tone, etc. are universally regarded as essential to an effective performance, while in the case of language use itself, considerations of play have indicated that structural innovation, rhythm, semantic sophistication and so on are universally recognised as aesthetically relevant. We might expect that further empirical research in this area would complete the list of relevant elements.

   We need not, however, outsource our critical facilities entirely to the laboratory, for a critic, being human, will have an innate sense of what will count as an element of assessment and what won’t. Moreover, in his audience, the critic has a mostly reliable guide to whether he has strayed from the path. If his audience come to a general agreement that some element of the performance that he has selected for consideration is not relevant as an assessment of a literary performance (quâ literary performance,) it will not be added to the list of elements that other critics will consider. The critic’s audience is itself the equivalent of a laboratory test of his hypothesis.
   

2. As to the specific criteria of evaluation for any particular element of assessment, it is highly unlikely that there will be any fixed scale for judgement. What kind of scale would measure the excellence of a plot structure, of a characterization, or of a work’s tone? Against what scale would one measure the excellence of a grammatical innovation, of a semantic shift, or of a lexical rhythm? These are rather matters of taste – within certain hard to define bounds anyway, and the critic will have no better course than to appeal to his own taste to make such an assessment.

   This needn’t mean that every critic’s preferences are ‘mere taste’ and deserving of no more respect than any other person’s. Hume made the point long ago that we are not all alike in our ability to recognise the particular forms and qualities that are productive of that pleasant feeling, and that this recognition has several consequences: firstly, we accept that there are those who have an elevated sensibility and should be taken as experts in the matter; secondly, it is possible to train one’s sensibility so as to improve one’s taste. With luck or practice one may become a true critic with “Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.” We can see in all this that there is room for a good deal of discussion and argument, and even for reasonable claims of error in aesthetic judgement; thus, Hume’s proposal would be one way to square the circle of the ultimate subjectivity of aesthetic judgements coexisting with their disputability.

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Albuquerque, D. L., and E. Emilee Moore. 2024. “Foregrounding Co‐Artistry in an Aesthetic and Plurilingual/Pluriliteracies Approach to Additional Language Teaching and Learning.” Frontiers in Education 8

Benítez‐Burraco, A., S. Hartmann, M. Pleyer (2026) ‘The Role of Play in Language Structure, Acquisition and Evolution’ Language and Linguistics Compass

Boyd Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Carroll Joseph. 2012. “The Truth About Fiction: Biological Reality and Imaginary Lives.” Style 46 (2): 129-60.

Cook, G. 1997. “Language Play, Language Learning.” ELT Journal 51, no. 3: 224–231.

1. 2000. Language Play, Language Learning. Oxford University Press.

Crystal, D. 1998. Language Play. University of Chicago Press.

Gottschall Jonathan. 2012. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Groos, K. The Play of Man, Appleton, New York, 1901

Haven, K. (2007). Story proof: The science behind the startling power of story. Libraries Unlimited.

Huizinga, J. (1950) Homo Ludens  Boston, MA: Beacon Press

Iacoboni, M. (2009). Mirroring people: The new science of how we connect with others. Picador.

Zak, P. J. (2013). “Why your brain loves good storytelling”. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/10/why-your-brain-loves-good-storytelling

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