Studies show reading literature may help promote empathy and social skills (Castano and Kidd) alleviate symptoms of depression (Billington et al.) business leaders succeed (Coleman) prevent dementia by stimulating the mind (Thorpe)

Let's say you come to the conclusion that a meme, a gossip magazine, or the Twilight Series is not literary. Does that mean you have to feel guilty and give up reading it forever? Or that it is not "good"? No!

A meme is an image or video containing cultural values or ideas, often represented through allusion (implied reference to another work, without naming that work or its author). Memes can spread rapidly spreads through social media. Why? Because the best ones are #relatable; that is, they speak to a common human experience. Usually memes take the form of text superimposed on an image. For example, the meme above conveys the dramatic reaction students sometimes give when I assign an essay. This is done primarily through a literary device called hyperbole, or exaggeration for rhetorical effect. It conveys its message comically through certain conventions that come along with the meme genre,

A literary critic is a person who studies and analyzes literature. A literary critic produces scholarship called literary criticism. An example of this would be Aristotle’s Poetics, in which he identifies the defining qualities of a “good” Tragedy. Aristotle’s analysis of Tragedy was so influential that it is still used today, over two thousand years later!

be a helpful way to think about literature because it provides a more open-ended way to discuss writing as art than simply labeling works as literary or not.