Cultural value

Literature has cultural value if reading it gives occasion to think about the place and time of the author at the time the work was written. Authors might seems like supernatural beings or at least people who are way above us, transcending the world down here to live among the heavens with their artistic visions, but they are actually regular people like the rest of us. They care about what is happening in the world around them, and they have experiences in life that shape their attitudes toward various issues. If their work addresses the attitudes, customs, and values of their time (or another time), then the work has cultural value. The work becomes a window into a world that is unfamiliar, and we are encouraged to compare cultural differences.