To know the right literature is to be invested with the authority of the right class. You know it's literature if it's difficult, but makes you feel superior because you can tackle it. Literature does a person good. Discovering the Ancient World I personally do believe that literature is a good thing, but this belief seems to me a kind of faith, and ultimately probably at least partly irrational, as pleasure is. Literature is a result of writing, which some have lamented as imposing a representational barrier between the human being and reality.
Literature is ultimately a result of language.
Perhaps literature comes to exist as a concept in our consciousness only after we have developed a religious consciousness. Perhaps it is always secondary, at best. N aturally, there are cavils and objections. Even white Protestants of another period or region would count as a different group. Strict emphasis on division would ultimately render it impossible for you to read anything but a very recent book produced by someone in your area sharing your ethnic background and religious beliefs.