Hooray! We're back! After a painfully long absence, the CenterForLit team has returned to wrestle with the hard questions of the Great Conversation. This time, we're broadening our scope a little. If we assume that literature is art, then we're forced to ask: What is art? What makes art good or bad? Must art be beautiful to be good? What does this mean for us as readers? Can we look into all the nooks and crannies of this question in 50 minutes? Probably not. But we might as well get the ball rolling!

Referenced Works:

–"What is Art?" by Leo Tolstoy

–Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth

–The Road by Cormac McCarthy

–"The Origin of the Work of Art" by Martin Heidegger

–The works of Stephen Crane, Marilynne Robinson, George MacDonald, and Edgar Allan Poe

We love hearing your questions and comments! You can contact us by emailing [email protected], or you can visit our website www.centerforlit.com to find even more ways to participate in the conversation.