Literature can always teach something else; e.g. one of the current tendencies in poetry is to mix its aesthetics with philosophy and/or politics, science, etc. (as in the social poetry from 20th Century), but this is also happening in the newest narrative, with novels crossing the boundaries between the 'classic' concepts of fiction and essay.

The readers can learn a lot from classic novels as "1984" (or "War and Peacer or whatever) about our current/recent society, History and politics, but also much more complex ideas about (or, at least, get some tips about those topics and read non-fiction later -if interested). So, I'd say that literature (but also other arts, even non-narrative ones) can certainly develop the perception of politics in citizens.

But, is that enough to improve politics? Not directly, but better citizens (more critical, more informed and more educated) will demand better politicians and I like to believe that literature is a good way to improve ourselves. Of course, reading just plain politic novels will make the readers ask questions, and that should also improve the politics of a country.

Moreover, the role of literature can be vital in those countries where citizens suffer dictatorship and/or censorship: censors sometimes ignore -or understimate or do not understand- the power of literature. So maybe those citizens can't read politic essay but they can read a novel and bloom to some degree of political knowledge from it.

Too dreamy?

PS. Please, forgive my mistakes in English. I hope everything is understandable.

Dear professor Zirange,

hope you find this excerpt from my work useful:

Homer’s epics today would be tantamount to a national narrative in which hostilities analogous to a war of annihilation would be told including the voice of the vanquished. It would be almost tantamount to place Münich by Steven Spielberg (2005) at the heart of the ethical self-understanding of the Israeli nation or Letters from Iwo Jima by Clint Eastwood (2006) at the heart of the United States’.

We could continue this juxtaposition of ancient and contemporary narratives from the point of view of their ability to foster an empathic recognition of the other. For this purpose, we could oppose the tragedy The Persians by Aeschylus ([472-463 BCE]1926) to the fictional account of the Battle of Thermopylae, 300 as told by Frank Miller (1998) in his graphic novel and as put on the screen by Zack Snyder (2007). Allegedly, 300, with its Manichaeist script and its caricatural depiction of Persian enemies, was made simply to entertain audiences, not to instruct or to educate anybody.i I bet Aeschylus also wanted to entertain Athens, being a tragedy an engaging activity that diverted people’s attention from their ordinary affairs. Yet, this cultural artifact is in conception, and its effect concerning the recognition of others, very different from 300.

Written just within 10 years after the Battles Thermopylae and of Salamis, Aeschylus’ The Persians, tells the story of how the news of the Persian campaign against the Greeks were awaited and received in the Persian court and how the king Xerxes, after returning to his court, reckoned and accepted his defeat. Haigh ([1896]1968, 103 ff) argues that Aeschylus wanted Athenians to see in Xerxes the perils of not placating human hubris, not only among the Persians but also among the Greeks. Therefore, rather than passing judgment on the vanquished Persians by means of a portrayal of the Greek victory as a triumph of the collective freedom of the polis against the sole freedom of the despot, Aeschylus invites Athenians to empathize their adversaries, abated by ruin and adversity.

In Considerations of Representative Government (ch. III), Mill ([1862]2004) says that “the practice of the dicastery and the ecclesia raised the intellectual standard of an average Athenian citizen far beyond any thing of which there is yet an example in any other mass of men, ancient or modern.” The juries and the popular assembly were, according to Mill, schools of public spirit. Mill, like Habermas, seem to pass over other forms of schooling not less fundamental to the maintenance of democracy: the also public school of dramas, tragic and comic, that made citizens divert their attention from their ordinary affairs and yet become aware of their common human condition.

Literature belongs to what Louis Althusser (1970) named the ideological state aparatuses (les appareils idéologiques d'état"(see http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1522/030140239). It then contributes to the interiorization by the reader of the dominant ideology. Further reading: De Lauretis, T.; (1987) Technologies of Gender. Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction., Indiana University press, Bloomington/ Eagleton, T., (2013) How to Read Literature. New haven/London, Yale University Press/Fetterley, J., (1978) The Resisting reader. A Feminist Approach to American Fiction, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press/ Jameson, F. (1981) The Political Unsconscious. Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act., Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press)

It might take more than a few literary works to change the ideological and thus political unconscience.

Literature and politics, literature and ideology, literature and sociology, literature and legal studies, literature and the arts, all encompassed by what Ulrich Weinstein included in his Vergleichende Literatur, seminal work of comparative literature, has been a central theme of study with several hundred books published.

I believe literature to be before and beyond these obligatory commitments, including Althusser, Stalin or Croce.

Literature has an open freedom based upon fancy and imagination (Coleridge), to which we could add experience and observation (Faulkner), and because of these boundaries or lack of boundaries is an open work (Eco), and as such can antecipate political, sociological, ideological tendencies which prevail in a determined society in a certain moment. Literature as a free creative endeavor can build heroes and situation in a given moment, departing from intuitive observations which one day may become a political or social reality in the fabric of a certain country.

Obviously, we can used vigent ideological superstructure as baic foundation to foster the writing of books, as the Soviets have done in the past, or as the capitalist structure does it with its best seller "creative" writers, but I would like to clarify that these literatures instead of antecipating intrinsic intuitive conflicts that produced a Joyce or Kafka, brings about the engaged artists which plot you can predict if you are already aware of its ideological presuppositions.

Open works, ideologically uncommitted literature, can indeed antecipate social and political conflicts, tendencies of a certain country's future, if read as a text, and interpreted departing from the internal textures of that society.

As an old saying goes, "Artists make lousy slaves." Most dictators first go after and destroy the intellects and artists, philosophers, thinkers. No writer works from a vacuum; as Nelson points out, quite often we can anticipate the future of a country from its great literary artists--and often its musicians. If there were little power in literature, why did the old Soviet Union ban Solzhenitsyn, Bakhtin (we never heard of him until the 1960s in the U.S.); why did the Greek regime of the early 1970s ban the music of Mikis Theodorakis and the books of Kazantzakis? Franco had Lorca murdered.  Literature opens the doors of possibility whether in politics, art, or science.  There is a wonderful text entitled "Art and Physics" by Leonard Shlain, who is Associate Professor of Surgery at University of California. So often, we hear that science makes great discoveries and narrative art then changes as a result; Dr. Shlain reverses that to the art that precedes the science that demonstrates the accuracy of the artist's vision. The point is that literature has always carried powerful messages whether ideological, cultural, or political. It also anticipates great changes for the future. There is no limit to the power of the creative mind and that is something that dictators cannot permit.

I love your response, Daniel.  Never "too dreamy."  Literature can comfort, arouse, instigate resistance, inspire and motivate--all by telling a story.  The power of the story is inestimable--in the U.S. narrative therapy is a growing approach to dealing with the traumas of war upon American soldiers and the trauma of victims of violence. Whether the stories are those of Signifying Monkey who defeats the great Lion, King of the Jungle. Or the stories of Brer Rabbit, who by cleverness, overcomes much more powerful enemies. Stories relate our greatest wishes, hopes, dreams for the future--and the realities of our situation that often serve to provoke the necessary changes.

Aysha Bey

University of Alabama at Birmingham

literature is fire, it depends how to use it.it can create false consciousness as Marx added and at the same time can be changed into a liberating force.it is quite stimulating.it is not confined to thinking arena as it is traditionally thought, but it goes with action too.in western philosophy you can find its proper place.literary schools are correlated with social movements and vise versa.so I think there are quite many evidences to suggest us literature has got the power to change.

we might see literature as an effect of political causes and claim that certain political environments give rise to certain types of literature. Rabindranath Tagore has written in the early 20th century in India might have its reflections in 21st century in Iran.The question of literature is suited to impart political insights presupposes an understanding of the scope of the political, and the kinds of phenomena that can properly be called political.

literature and politics have been manifested in the organization of many literary interest groups, formed to make members' work better known, to encourage production, to pressure governments and other patrons for support, and to secure an atmosphere in which writers can produce well and profitably

Literature is undeniably connected with politics.