"There is no cumulative notion of literary interpretation," Chaouli says. "You don't get closer to a true and final understanding by building on the work of others."

This, of course, leaves literary scholars with some very pressing questions. What should students be learning? What is our role as academics?

Chaouli has grappled with these problems since coming from his native Iran to study literature as an undergraduate at Yale University. After completing his graduate work in comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, he came to Harvard to teach in the departments of Comparative Literature and Germanic Languages and Literatures.

"I wanted to address the puzzle that literature is," he says. "On the one hand, literature seems gratuitous, and yet there isn't a culture in the world that doesn't have a form of literature or storytelling."

It was this interest in the puzzling role literature plays in our lives that led Professor Chaouli to enter the debate over the crisis in literature. In an article published recently in the Times Literary Supplement, he puts forth the idea that this so-called crisis is actually what makes literature worth studying.

"Let's admit to this problem," he says, "and see what consequences it has."

In his estimation, literature shows that not all knowledge is quantifiable. There is always something new in a literary work-- a new interpretation, a new insight. In a sense, the literary work itself changes over time.

"There are certain things we can't prove, but we still want to say them," Chaouli says, "and literature allows us to do that. It's always going to be in the in-between area between science and opinion. We shouldn't give it up because of this, but enjoy it."