The paper is devoted to a relevant problem: how literature influences the students’ cultural self-identification in the process of its study. The purpose of this scientific work is to identify the criteria a modern literature textbook must meet, and to demonstrate the educational role literature plays in the cultural identity formation, illustrated with the example of books on literary theory and the Russian literature history of the 19th – 20th centuries. The most appropriate approach to the problem is the culturological one. Based on the statement that the personal involvement in society and culture within the literature studying course is a cultural identification, the authors put forward a number of recommendations aimed at updating the content in educational books related to the disclosure of their cultural context, inter-text, creative links, typological similarities, intermediate issues, media citations. The paper provides examples of textbooks that demonstrate the successful experience of combining a cultural approach with an immanent description of the writer's work, which is of practical value for creating new educational books on literature.

identity, cultural approach, value-based system, literary education