Narrative is said to be an important way that humans come to understand their world as it is and as it can be. If this is true, then literary narrative must possess significant value since it has historically and cross-culturally received much attention and appreciation. This study gives an account of the cognitive value of literature in terms of its use of simulative experience and its conduciveness to the process of identification. A version of the Subjective Knowledge Theory (SKT) will be defended by examining simulation as a common means to such subjective knowledge. In concert with such a defense will be the undoing of the hasty conflation (made by both proponents and opponents of SKT) of simulative knowledge via the literary narrative's aesthetic qualities and the values that readers can adapt to their own projects through identification. Both are sources of cognitive value readers can get from literary narrative, but they must be carefully separated in any such account of literary value. (Contains 49 notes.)