Literature deals with

Concept

A literal-comprehension question is settled by what the passage itself predicates of the subject named in the stem. Locate the clause in which the text states what that subject "is about" or "deals in", and accept only what that clause asserts — not an idea the passage raises elsewhere in its argument, and not a term the passage introduces only as a contrast.

Application

The stem asks what literature deals with. The passage answers it in one sentence: "Literature, it is argued, is about human experiences rather than about intellectual abstractions; it deals in what is called the ‘felt reality’ of human flesh and blood, and in sap and savour (rasa) rather than in arid and lifeless ideas." The verb "deals in" governs the phrase "the ‘felt reality’ of human flesh and blood". So the thing literature deals with is the felt reality of human life.

Cross-check

• "Intellectual abstractions" and "arid and lifeless ideas" (plainly, dry and empty ideas) are both introduced by "rather than". The sentence uses them as the terms literature is set against, so neither is what the verb "deals in" takes.

• "Human experiences" is predicated of literature, but the passage never narrows those experiences to politics. Its running argument is the opposite: that political situations and political ideas resist the highest kind of literary representation.

• "Felt reality" is the only phrase in the sentence that the verb "deals in" actually takes, and the passage reinforces it by pairing it with sap and savour (rasa).

Answer: literature deals with the felt reality of human life.