Literature

Literature is a portal to a larger life, opening a space where understanding and empathy can grow.

When we study literature, we have the chance to travel through the centuries and across the globe by way of an intimate immersion in another person’s experiences of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains, and truths. Whether thinking about ethics in Dostoevsky, narrative voice in Faulkner, environment in Jesmyn Ward, or lyric address in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, students of literature dig deeply into how words come together to create meaning. At Marlboro, students learned what novels, poems, plays, and memoirs could tell us about the cultures in which they are made, and also how these works tell new stories, introduce powerful metaphors, transform the ways we see and think about certain subjects, and otherwise shape conversations and attitudes.