Literary critic Charles Baxter dismisses any attempt to answer the question definitively:
I’d never want to say that there’s only one purpose to literature. I’m not even sure that literature has a purpose, other than to give pleasure and, possibly, enlightenment. Ours is a pragmatic culture, and we’re always trying to justify something by saying what its purpose is. But sometimes art has no clear purpose, apart from the pleasure it gives. What’s the purpose of Debussy’s Preludes? And do novels really make us care deeply about others? If they did, English departments would be full of generous, humane, and sweet-tempered people. Joseph Goebbels wrote a novel, and Hitler loved Wagner’s operas. Art does not always make us better people. We have to remember that.
The Dish 