What is literature and why study it?

Literature is a wide ranged collections of stories, novels, poems, and other written works.  It is the basis of the world's language.  Literature outlives the years, we read and study works written hundreds of years ago by people who have long since been dead.  Literature gives us a peak into the past.  It allows us to share emotion and relate experiences.  People may be able to relate to a certain piece of work to their life.  People may also be inspired to write their own works based off of their reaction to some one else's.  Literature is an outlet of creativity.  We study it to learn, become better writers, to understand other cultures and time periods or simply to teach ourselves an outlet for our emotions.  Clearly literature is a great cornerstone in our world because we are taught it since grade school and without it communication would be almost impossible.