There's a wonderful piece in today's Chronicle of Higher Education about teaching literature by Mark Edmundson, Professor of English at the University of Virginia.

He argues that the critic's role is not to apply a particular critical framework (e.g. a Marxian view of Blake) but to lead a reader to understand a Blakean view of Blake, an Emersonian view of Emerson:

I said that transformation was the highest goal of literary education. The best purpose of all art is to inspire, said Emerson, and that seems right to me. But that does not mean that literary study can't have other beneficial effects. It can help people learn to read more sensitively; help them learn to express themselves; it can teach them more about the world at large. But the proper business of teaching is change — for the teacher (who is herself a work in progress) and (pre-eminently) for the student.