Under the conditions of the sociocultural situation in Russia today, the teaching of literature is going through a crisis. The students are no longer reading as much and are no longer motivated to acquaint themselves with literature of high artistic quality. To address this crisis, the author says that what is needed is a search for effective ways to improve the teaching of literature, with the aim of strengthening the beneficial effect of good-quality literature on the personality. The only way to do this is to make use of didactic principles of individually oriented instruction in the methodology of teaching literature.