Since literature appeals to our feelings as well as our senses, it can enrich our emotional life. Lyric poetry in particular celebrates such great lyric subjects as love and friendship. The emotional high points in our lives are thus captured and explored. But also our feelings at low points such as separation and death can find relief through expres-sion in literature. The Psalms, the Song of Solomon, Lamentations and the book of Job are all excellent examples of this.
Literature can make our senses more alert, our feelings more sensitive.
Literature can deepen our thoughts as well. Because literature interprets, simplifies and focuses our experience it helps us realize what is most important, most basic, in human experience. These most basic aspects of our experience are called literary archetypes. These archetypes might be thought of as the basic building blocks of all meaningful human experience. Our experience can be broken down into a wide variety of different aspects, such as the supernatural, human charac-ters, human relationships, clothing, the human body, food, etc.