Image: Gunnar Ridderström
by Suzanne Cremen
Last year, The Age reported that Year 12 students were ‘leaving literary studies on the shelf.’ Due to low enrolment, some Australian schools have dropped literary studies altogether. Literature has toppled off the top twenty list, in favour of subjects like accounting and business management, specialist maths, psychology, legal studies, and health and human development. In the face of escalating inter-generational economic inequality, these subjects are viewed by many students and parents to be a safer bet in a competitive job market. Literary studies fall by the wayside with the perception, aided by Federal government policy and funding, that they are for the elite, the bookworm or the dreamer, offering little in the way of practical relevance or job prospects besides perhaps a high-school teaching career (which is of course an essential and noble, if underpaid, profession).
How then do we imagine into an uncharted future? Literature exercises our imagination, and imagination is arguably the most useful tool we possess. “Imagination beats the opposable thumb,” said Ursula Le Guin, “I could imagine living without my thumbs, but not without my imagination.”
As an undergraduate I majored in psychology and English literature (alongside law, my ‘safe bet’). I dropped psychology as I discovered that I was learning more about the human psyche and deeper themes of life – themes such as love, death, power, betrayal, integrity and resilience – from the study of Shakespeare than I was from Skinner. I was the first generation in my family afforded the opportunity to attend university. Diving into some of the world’s great literature offered me insights of intrinsic value, meaning, even empowerment, as I sought to understand my life and envision my role in the world.
The Australian curriculum acknowledges that studying English, including literature, helps to create ‘confident communicators, imaginative thinkers and informed citizens’. Yet it sows confusion by dislocating literature from its rightful place as a discipline of the humanities. Since the 19th century the humanities have been considered as those disciplines which investigate expressions of the human mind, such as languages, literature, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and the arts.
Historically and internationally, literature is the quintessential humanities discipline. Yet today, the Victorian education system categorises economics and business as humanities subjects, while excluding literature. This separation of literature from the humanities is an insidious step in undermining the value of the classical humanities and literary studies for understanding psyche, culture, even organisational life, in favour of reductive, mechanistic approaches which have come to dominate psychology, economics, and management. As useful as data-collection can be, it’s well-recognised by researchers and practitioners across many fields that stories can be more potent to shift paradigms and inspire us to live better lives. Well-told stories which stimulate the mind and touch the heart hold the key to transformation.
The analysis of texts hones skills which underpin many analytical professions. Skills such as research, listening, connecting complex ideas, critical thinking and artful communication, though of course the development of such skills is not exclusive to a literature degree. But an education in literature bestows a further bounty. Studying literature also cultivates empathy, intellectual dexterity, imagination, and the ability to entertain – even to dance with – ambiguity and paradox: all so essential in a COVID and post-COVID world. Entering the stories and experiences of people from other times and places, we learn to identify with common human predicaments. We learn to see the world through the lens of many types of vulnerability.
These skills are far from ivory-tower activities. They have multiple ‘real-world’ applications, besides enriching and fortifying our inner lives. Even if we are focused primarily on economics, as Martha Nussbaum notes in Not for Profit: ‘critical thinking builds corporate cultures of accountability in which critical voices are not silenced. And a trained imagination is essential for innovation, a key to any healthy economy’ (p.x). The skills finessed through literary studies are transferrable to many occupations, including marketing, teaching, counselling, management, advocacy, community development, and publishing (all examples from my own career). As Robert Eaglestone observed, ‘Coding might get you a first job, but an English degree makes your career’.
One particular skill developed in all literature students is the understanding of metaphor. There is magic and power in metaphor. In the words of the mythologist Joseph Campbell, ‘If you want to change the world, change the metaphor’. My introduction to metaphor as a literary device occurred when I was confronted in high-school with John Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Yes, I did wonder how studying paradoxical poems written by a 17th century Englishman about a flea or rising sun and his lover were preparing me for life and a career. I came to see how the poet’s use of metaphor (from the Greek μεταφέρω, metapherō, meaning ‘to carry over’) performed a kind of ‘bridging role’. A metaphor is a way we are carried from one place to another. Metaphors allow us to cross boundaries impossible to traverse by reason alone.
We live in a society that doesn’t understand metaphor, nor appreciate its healing power. So let me offer two brief practical examples, from the fields of management and career counselling, to illustrate how metaphor matters, and how working with metaphor can shift ‘stuck-ness’ and awaken new possibilities.
In his bestselling classic Images of Organizations, Gareth Morgan showed how oft-unconscious images and metaphors lead people to perceive and manage organisations in particular ways. Common metaphors include the organisation as a machine (that needs to be engineered), a culture (that needs to be created), a political system (that needs to be controlled), an organism (that needs to evolve) and even a psychic prison (an image that visited me during my short career in a law firm, but that’s another story). Good managers and leaders need to develop skills and fluency in reading and working with metaphors. They can then use the insights afforded by metaphor to understand and shape the situations they want to organize and manage. Organisational managers and consultants dealing with change (and who isn’t?) would do well to understand the art of metaphor. Literary studies help us to develop that art.
At some stage, we may indeed find ourselves locked in the cognitive trap of a ‘psychic prison’, (whether that be an occupation or organisation), or ‘at a crossroad’, or ‘at sea’. Somewhere around midlife, perhaps in early adulthood, or even at retirement, we may question that decision to pursue a career in law, or engineering, or finance, and wonder if it’s time for a change. But what could that be? Career counselling approaches are increasingly realising the potential of engaging metaphor for working with clients. Indeed, metaphor is now advocated internationally as one of the most powerful tools in vocational guidance, far more effective at certain stages than psychometric instruments or trait and factor matching. Career counsellors are encouraged to listen for metaphoric images in clients’ descriptions of their stories to gain deeper insight into their career situation. They can then help the client manipulate the metaphor to enhance their personal agency and action, and to negotiate the demands of a paradoxical world. What lies at the root of most career impasses, observed careers professor Norman Amundson, is a ‘crisis of imagination’. Metaphor is the all-terrain vehicle which gets us out of a stuck place, off the paved road and travelling with purpose in interesting new territory. Yet despite the positive results and pleasure of using metaphor and story in career counselling, many career counsellors lack skills or confidence to drive such a vehicle. A literature graduate is at home at the wheel.
So if you’d like to spin some real-world magic into life and work, consider the value of literary studies. Studying literature teaches us to see an imaginative dimension in all our interactions. It helps us to build bridges between worlds.
*Dr Suzanne Cremen is the author of From Career to Calling, A depth psychology guide to soul-making work in darkening times (Routledge 2020), which was a finalist in the Australian Career Book Awards. She holds a PhD, two Masters degrees (in Depth Psychology, and Engaged Humanities & Mythological Studies), and degrees in Law and Arts. Her professional roles include general manager of non-profit organisation Humanities 21 and founder of Life Artistry Centre. Suzanne has a passion for advancing and promoting applications of the humanities to re-imagine notions of work, careers and leadership, to foster creativity and respect for diversity, and to heal our relationships with the natural world.
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