Literature and life in class

As a break in my writing today I watched online Joseph Epstein's lecture on the topic A Literary Education. Once more I found myself thinking about the task of teaching literature in our age. Epstein quoted a line which says "it is the business of literature to turn facts into ideas" and he further illustrated how in his classes he encourages students to learn about life from their readings. An interesting and, in many ways, a challenging view. To my undergraduate students I teach the history of Japanese classical literature, as they do not have any knowledge of it once they enter university; with my graduate students I read primary sources and think with them about how to read these sources, about how to think and talk critically about them using many different theoretical tools. There is not much space about a reflection on the impact of literary contents in our life. Is this a kind of reading that can become "academic", in the sense that it can be experienced in class, or does it pertain to a more "intimate shpere" of reading? I also wonder whether this is possible and / or impellent for any literary production (e.g. that of a prose production which is thought to be educational and entertaining and addresses a popular public which just conquered literacy). And this question brings us to a reflection of what literature is....