This publication reports on a study exploring how prospective English teachers view literature and how they think literature is taught and learned. The study is based on an extensive interview protocol, the "Understanding Literature for Teaching Interview." The protocol consists principally of a series of tasks, such as developing sample lessons and tests, designed to elicit the students views' on literature (including evaluation of various texts as literature, discussion of a literary text or author, text analysis, and critical theory) and views on teaching (teaching text analysis and critical theory, text selection, assessing pupil knowledge and understanding, and teaching strategies and scenarios). In carrying out these tasks, prospective teachers draw on their knowledge and understanding of literature and of the teaching of literature. As well as being useful for collecting data on prospective teachers' knowledge and understandings, the tasks have pedagogical value, requiring students to confront fundamental issues about the nature of literary study, the nature of knowing in literature, and the teaching of literature. The appendix, approximately two-thirds of the report, includes the full text of the interview protocol itself. (Contains 36 references.) (ND)