"What good is the study of literature? Does it help us think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it? ... What difference does the study of literature make in our social or political or religious attitude? In my early days I thought very little about such questions, not because I had any of the answers, but because I assumed that anybody who asked them was naive. I think now that the simplest questions are not only the hardest to answer, but the most important to ask, so I'm going to raise them and try to suggest what my present answers are."
Written in a relaxed, informal, and frequently humorous style, The Educated Imagination is an easy introduction to Northrop Frye's theories of literature and literary education.