Literature has a special relation with truth. It often purports to reveal that there are many ways of conceiving truth, that indeed there is no absolute truth. Yet there are, in literature, notions of truth like the truth of the slave narratives and all of the so-called protest literature that resist relativization. In a sense, much of our work and expertise as literary scholars is to distinguish between claims to truth and to advance one claim against others through persuasive and valid arguments. To do that, we employ an ability to think critically that we have developed and trained as part of our professional identity. So embedded is this ability in the practice of literary studies that it might be considered exemplary for what theorists of critical thinking tentatively call “a way of being” and “a habit of the mind”. After a brief discussion of a few conceptualizations of truth in literature and literary studies, I present the notion of “intuitive critical thinking” and its possibilities for teaching literature in higher education, with a focus on the syllabi of some of my literature courses at the University of Gävle.