| Abstract | The cultural value of the liberal arts needs to be reasserted at a time when funding for the humanities in higher education is under threat. The value of literary scholarship in the humanities discipline lies in helping students understand and appreciate works of human imaginative vision. Students can benefit by examining the language and structure of the works, placing them in a wider context of literary and cultural history, and focusing on the potential significance of literary accounts of experience for understanding actual lives. The essential value of the liberal arts needs to be defended against the crass attitude of administrators, who fail to see the value of the humanities, and against educators who defend the importance of the humanities only for ideological purposes.
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