This response to the current crisis in the field of literary studies describes the fundamental flaws of poststructuralist literary criticism, which has become a self-serving enterprise at the expense of scholarship at large and students in particular. Outlining an improved approach that meets the expectations of 21st-century students and teachers, the author proposes a new definition of the literary object of study which addresses the inconsistencies of the literary canon by including nontraditional narratives such as films, comic books and pop songs.