Is 'Teaching Literature' teaching the history of it, its development, with chronologies, neat time-lines and artificial demarcations between periods and centuries? As when we teach 'Romanticism' as a block of similar writers and ideas, or as when we teach '19th-Century Fiction' as if everyone in that time wrote the same way? Because what is similar between e.g. Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and Jules Verne, beyond the fact they all lived in the 19th Century?
Or is 'Teaching Literature' to do with analysis, with terminology, with techniques? But then, what is the point of teaching that there are such things as 'Metaphors', or 'Alliteration' and other such terms in isolation? After all, a metaphor (i.e. a way to talk about A in terms of B) depends on its context to take on meaning; an alliteration is a way to organise sounds, but knowing that doesn't tell us anything about the relationship between those sounds and meaning.Â
Or is 'Teaching Literature' to do with fun, with pleasure, with encouragement to embrace reading? But then, statistics in the Netherlands, France, the US or England show very clearly that the vast majority of people do not read - or hardly at all - and that what they read would not be deemed literature at all: they like bibliographies of celebrities, cookbooks, easy detectives, thick Romance novels or even thicker Fantasy ones. And how may teachers consistently read more complex, nuanced, demanding material?
Or perhaps are you more interested in Teaching with Literature, that is, use texts (call it literature, call it fiction, call it what you like) as a means to an end but not as an end unto itself? Perhaps you want to use texts as a support for discussing ideas, generating interpretations, making a case for being curious and open-minded? In that case, who wrote the text, how, when and where ceases to be relevant as you are only interested in the text and what you can start off with it: the text becomes a starting point, a springboard, a key to open doors.
This nuance (Teaching Literature vs Teaching with Literature) is important, and goes well beyond the name: understanding the difference leads to making choices that matter to learners: being exposed to an extract from Shakespeare is not being asked to think about what is being said and what it may mean. Being asked to make a chronology of canonical authors is not being asked to engage with their ideas, their world and mine. Being given a fun text for the sole reason that it is fun is not being asked to think for myself, to consider others, to evaluate how things are.