While many people (the ingenuous) may argue that literature has no function whatsoever, and that it is only the product, like any other product, such as a Chia pet, music videos, and video games, meant solely for personal gratification, those reflective and erudite few who prefer lucubration to the mental masturbation (which video games and music videos engender) of the majority in society understand that the functions of literature and reasons for its production, and indeed everything in society that can be read as a "text", are multifarious and have a profound impact on those who "read" them. However, despite the agreement about the many functions that literature performs, there is striking dissension over the existence and degree of such things as overt and implicit ideological and political agendas, the value of literature as a product entirely free of such agendas, the qualities that constitute "literary greatness" (if there is such a thing), and whether literature is subjective, and meant for the individual, or inherently objective, either in implicit or explicit language, helping to form communal bonds through inter-subjectivity, or perhaps to use that same inter-subjectivity as a hostile take-over measure by indoctrinating unsuspecting masses with clandestine ideologies. …
