I agree with Dave, except for his use of "must be seen as."  There are
certainly other valid ways to view literature.  Dave's way is one valid and
useful way of seeing it.  Sometimes, it is more useful to view it as a
symptom
of those ailments rather than a treatment.  Otherwise, what are we to do
with
things like Pound's, Eliot's, Hemingway's, Cather's, and Fitzgerald's racism
and anti-Semitism?

By the way, the whole idea of "reading literature as literature" seems to me
to
be fairly simple and straightforward.  The New Critics paved the way for
this
kind of reading.  They went to extremes, but their offspring, the
formalists,
are pretty clear about what that term means.

Richard Tuerk, Literature & Languages, East Texas State U