Does literature have a standard by which it can be measured?
Yes, it does, by what Plato called First Principles, meaning the first principle parts in the definition of a thing. I.e. as a thing is composed of only its two nameable parts, then there are two ways to measure literature, the relative and correlative, i.e. the use of metaphor, and the use of the literal, as related to the function of the mind.
Thus, Plato used these two elements of a thing both ways, in metaphor such as the ability to see the one in the many and the many in the one, i.e. the noun distinct from the verb, and the verb as distinct from the noun. Or again, a class as distinct from the members of that class.
That is how you sort the claimed Dialogs of Plato, when you can see his topic, and why he wrote on it and tested readers by it.
For example, many so call claimed Platonic scholars claim that the the Republic was about the Ideal state, when in a lengthy discourse at the beginning, the discourse was a challenge to Socrates to put the best of people, into the worst possible circumstances so as to fool both gods and men, which, he demanded to be recanted in the last book, and as he admitted there, you cannot fool the gods, but you can fool men, and history has justified those words. The illiterate, those who cannot read, can even get PhD''s today and teach rubbish.
Plato was teaching the application of the definition of a thing, and how to recursively use it. Dialectic, grammar in accordance with 2's or the two elements of a thing. Every grammar system is a method of binary recursion, i.e. this foundation is over all sciences, as he said, but the illiterate keep demonstrating that they cannot even think, or even imagine what a definition is.
The Bible is even harder than Plato, yet every metaphor, repeated from front to back, is based in biological fact. But its aim, was to implant in minds metaphor which stressed the mind to help mankind evolve.
The first principle of mankind is his mind, how it reads information, processes information and writing it back to the body as behavior.
Thus, good literature is only written by those who show they know what the function of a mind is, and how it is learnt and applied to human behavior. I.e. the first principle of what we are.
The stupid are want to call anything good lit, because they have no real standard to use, the standard for every human is exactly the same.
Good Literature is that which is aimed at the objective and provable in the productions of the Good, or Superior Man. It is directed solely at producing a functional mind so that mankind can do his own work.