One of the oldest and most enduring debates in world literary thought concerns the role of literature in society. For centuries, scholars, philosophers and readers have disagreed not only on whether literary works are morally good or harmful, but also on how the very act of reading shapes us before we even begin to assess any book, play or poem.
This is far from an abstract quarrel. It has, at different moments, shaped what can be taught in schools and which works are performed on stage, particularly across Africa. Elsewhere, the debate has tipped into matters of life and death. The most famous case is that of Salman Rushdie, the Indian-born British-American writer whose Midnight’s Children won the Booker Prize in 1981. Yet it was another of his works, The Satanic Verses, that provoked outrage, leading to a fatwa – a religious death sentence – that forced him into hiding for years.
To trace the origins of this question, we might return to the years 470–399 BCE, the time of Socrates. Born the son of a stonemason and a midwife, he became famous for the Socratic method – a probing style of questioning that explored ethics, justice and virtue. Though debates about art predate him, Socrates was one of the earliest thinkers to pronounce himself – as Kenyan politicians might say – on literature’s place in public life.
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Socrates left no writings of his own, so we know his views mainly through Plato and Xenophon. His questioning so irritated the Athenian authorities that, eventually, he was sentenced either to renounce his teachings or drink hemlock. In Phaedo, Plato records the remarkable scene of 399 BCE when Socrates, rather than compromise, calmly discussed the immortality of the soul with his students, before draining the fatal draught.
So what did he think of art? In Ion, Socrates dismisses poets as “possessed by the Muses”, creating not through reason or clarity but through divine madness. Because they could not rationally explain their work, they should never be trusted as guides to truth.
Plato echoed his teacher’s suspicion. In The Republic, he claimed poetry and drama were mere imitations, thrice removed from true knowledge, which resides only in the realm of ideas. To him, poets had no place in an ideal republic. Like modern censors, he believed literature corrupted the young by stirring emotions rather than reason, distracting them from virtue. He was especially troubled by Greek tragedy’s audacity to depict the gods as quarrelsome or deceitful. For Plato, literature was acceptable only when reshaped to instil discipline, virtue and reverence for truth.
Aristotle, Plato’s student, mounted the counter-argument. In Poetics, he claimed art does not reproduce literal facts but illuminates universal truths. Tragedy, by evoking pity and fear, purges us of these emotions, bringing catharsis.
Centuries later, the same divide appeared in Africa. Few debates split African literature more sharply than the one sparked by the Négritude movement of the 1930s.
Founded by Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas, Négritude celebrated Black identity, heritage and culture against colonial racism and assimilation. It glorified African traditions and spirituality, often in romantic tones. Yet critics accused it of being nostalgic, elitist and detached from real postcolonial struggles.
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka famously quipped: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it pounces.” His scepticism found allies in figures like Chinua Achebe, who insisted that literature should not retreat into romantic celebration but confront colonialism and help rebuild African societies. Achebe himself demonstrated this through prose firmly rooted in Igbo culture and rhythms, steering away from abstraction.
This old argument between art as aesthetic celebration and art as political engagement still shapes African writing. From it grew the divide between “art for art’s sake” and “art as liberation”. On one side stand those who argue literature should be valued for imagination and craft, free from political burden. On the other are writers such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Ousmane Sembène and Nadine Gordimer, who insist that writers have a moral responsibility to confront oppression and liberate minds.
Yet not all writers fit neatly into either camp. M.H. Abrams, in The Mirror and the Lamp, argued that literature cannot be fixed as a single, permanent thing. It can reflect, instruct, express or stand as pure form.
Psychoanalytic approaches add another layer. They suggest that characters we despise may mirror our own unresolved guilt or trauma. A powerful novel may unsettle us precisely because it reflects wounds we carry, even across generations in our very genes. Literature can therefore act as a mirror and, at times, as a healer.
Some writers admit they kill beloved characters to serve their own artistic or psychological needs. Asked why he did so, one famously snapped: “You can write your own book and keep all your characters.” This raises the question: could a character be so entwined with an author’s psyche that altering them feels like self-mutilation? Jacques Lacan went further, suggesting that stories may unconsciously serve to heal their creators, which in turn explains why readers often identify with “absurd” or eccentric figures. Perhaps such characters reflect the readers themselves.
No one captured this better than Nikolai Gogol in The Government Inspector, once a Kenyan set book. The play follows a penniless drifter mistaken for a powerful official by corrupt town leaders, who shower him with bribes. Later, in a mocking letter, he exposes their folly. Audiences laugh uproariously – until a character delivers the devastating line: “What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourselves.”
That, in the end, is literature’s enduring truth. The broken souls we mock or pity in books are not merely characters. They are mirrors of our own frailties, desires and contradictions. And it is in recognising ourselves in them – whether with laughter, pity or fear – that literature continues to matter.
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By Henry Munene