Outline

Introduction

How Literature Can Matter to Leadership Studies

Oedipus: It's All About the Vision

Background Story of Oedipus

Comparison with Franklin D. Roosevelt

Conclusion

Comparing Oedipus with Franklin D. Roosevelt

Introduction

Knowledge about leadership exists in many sources that share common roots—the human mind, spirit, and imagination. For most of human history, wisdom about leadership is expressed in literary art: mythology, epic poetry, lyrics, drama, and imaginary dialogues. In this chapter, old literary friends (or bores or bullies) from the literature major's canon are reviewed as significant resources for leadership studies and practice. This literature helps us understand leadership and its vital qualities that communities and organizations need to thrive.

How Literature Can Matter to Leadership Studies

Literature and leadership are inextricable at the big bang of human consciousness. In ancient societies when writing was in its infancy, people scratched in clay, etched in stone, and scribbled on leaves and bark what they knew about the world. Writing was difficult to produce, and people transcribed oral histories of what they felt was most important to communicate and make permanent. It turns out that leadership has been on our minds as long as humanity has struggled to express itself. As a topic occupying human thought in formal expression, civic and political leadership rivals and encompasses the themes of love, meaning of life, and nature.

A play, poem, or story may not be “objective,” and the way something is expressed may be “odd.” But literature functions as paradox: Even though it is made up, it is true. Language arts work on the principle of engineered truth. To become real to the mind, literature must align with the world as we know it. Although the content of the poem, play, or story never existed before in such linguistic form, and may appear as something wild in the mind—fresh, startling, even erratic—the way literature is made must conform to a logic of lived sense, following linguistic rules and processes of reason.

Literature is a powerful lens through which to see the world. It can illuminate, magnify, and give a shaping perspective to what is seen. Literature can be the agent to make reality visible, transforming the raw data of our experience into significance. Literature can open our eyes to help us comprehend the meaning of what is happening around us, and thus avoid the paradox of human experience as expressed by T. S. Eliot in his poem from The Four Quartets: “We had the experience but missed the meaning.” Eliot uses the poet's insight to warn us that just because something is “real” does not mean people understand it or even see it.

Oedipus: It's All About the Vision

Literature expresses views and representations of leadership through a double lens: We see leadership from a leader's point of view and from that of the community. We see the perspective of immediacy, as a leader and community mutually engage in governance before the reader's eyes, and of reflections on the long-term consequences of leadership, both for a leader and the community. What emerges through such a ...