The study of literature did not exist in the way we know it today. somehow, it is a very modern discipline, but it can also be said to be one of the oldest disciplines. If we allow ourselves to include the oral tradition of the ancient world, where poets studied the methods of narrating ’stories’, we appreciate there is a formal method to those ancient works. These poets had formalized techniques in the form of rhythms and refrains, which were learnt and then, performed.

The fact that the first poets understood devices and techniques is evidence of literary techniques. A modern way still make this association that the reading of books is connected to the act of performance in all its manifestations. Certainly, a craftsman must learn the tools of the trade to understand and preserve a custom, which scholars, in the case of ancient Greece have attributed to Homer, however in the modern day context the study of literature has lost that affinity for creating artistic products. Studying literature does not necessarily result in the production of great literature, whatever that may be. Literature in the ancient world was in a complex way twined with social life. We know for instance that poetry was part of religious habits, rites and collective history. In other words, literature had a social purpose in the ancient world whose dominant form was poetry, which communicated to the community various aspects of its customs and history. But what purpose does it serve to our present age, when we can read history from books and learn about the world around us through the media? The answer to this question lies in the way we should receive and look at books. To explain this I will touch on the academic heritage of books. The study of literature was entrenched in another related discipline called rhetoric, which in its scope touched a range of topics that to the modern may be shocking. Such include philosophy, grammar, history and literary writing. Despite that in the contemporary context it has acquired a derisive status as being shallow and persuasive rather than sincere, the ancient and medieval world regarded it as a discipline that encompasses a range of problems.

Central to rhetoric of Freedom Jonathan Franzen is the study of language akin to our contemporary day literary studies. If we move ahead to the Renaissance era, rhetorical studies expanded into the area of studying the styles and forms of classical writers, including the ideas from Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. This pivotal moment in Western history is what we define as the Renaissance and the approach is what is called humanism. In the set of courses of universities in Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we have what is described as the study of grammar, poetry, moral philosophy and history. Interestingly, professional rhetoricians per Oprah Freedom book thought these areas under the compass of rhetoric.