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What Is Literature

Eagleton examines different ways of defining literature and their difficulties. He rejects defining it solely based on formal literary devices or social value judgments. Eagleton concludes that literature presents linguistic expressions of social representations within non-homogeneous ideologies, using deviations from conversational norms. It derives from invisible belief systems that support the assumptions of social ideologies exercising power over others. Eagleton will prove this view by examining the history of English literature.

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62 views

What Is Literature

Eagleton examines different ways of defining literature and their difficulties. He rejects defining it solely based on formal literary devices or social value judgments. Eagleton concludes that literature presents linguistic expressions of social representations within non-homogeneous ideologies, using deviations from conversational norms. It derives from invisible belief systems that support the assumptions of social ideologies exercising power over others. Eagleton will prove this view by examining the history of English literature.

Uploaded by

Francis Flores
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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What is Literature

Eagleton's "Introduction" addresses the question made necessary by the


study of literary theory, which is a system or systems for critically
understanding literature. Eagleton wants to explain the answer to the question
"What is literature?" Let's look at how he answers this question and at what
his conclusion is.

To answer "What is literature?" Eagleton examines several different ways of


defining literature and points out the difficulties with each of them. He says
that Russian formalists reduce everything in a work of literature to the formal,
that is structural, parts of the text and equally disregard author and message.
He mentions that Formalist Osip Brick once said, in defence of disregarding
the author when analyzing literature, that if Pushkin had not lived, Eugene
Onegin--which is the textual expression of a material reality--would have been
written anyway because it was a textual expression of a present material
reality.

Eagleton points out the difficulty with this definition of literature by explaining
that a past author, such as Orwell, would be surprised that the subjects and
themes they wrote about were not important, but rather the literary devices
that upturn reality through "defamiliarization" and other devices, which give a
work "literariness," are what is important.

He also presents the definition that literature is that which is chosen as "fine
writing" based on social value-judgements. He discusses how, according to
Marxist theory, these value-judgements arise from the ideologies that form the
superstructure that create and uphold the power structures in society. The
difficulty he points out here is that society is not homogeneous, thus an
expected social value-judgement may not be forthcoming when a work is
presented as being representative of the social ideology thus leading the work
(and author) to be rejected.
With these and many more discussions and examples of proffered answers to
what literature is, Eagleton arrives at his definition and at what he wants to
explain. In brief, Eagleton concludes that:

(1) literature is not objectively determined: that which is called literary may not
remain immutably, unchangeably categorized as literature.

(2) literature is not a construct of "whimsical" choice on arbitrary principles of


"taste."

(3) literature presents linguistic expressions of social and personal


representations of beliefs within non-homogeneous social ideologies which
holds "literary language as a set of deviations from a [conversational] norm."

(4) literature is derived from strong undercurrents of social ideologies


representing strongly rooted (often invisible) belief systems.

(5) literature supports the "assumptions" of the social ideologies by which


select groups "exercise and maintain power" over the social construct

Eagleton ends by suggesting that his assertions can be proven and chooses
the history of English literature as a starting place for that proof (Chapter 1:
"The Rise of English").

[S]ocial ideologies ... refer in the end not simply to private taste, but to the
assumptions by which certain social groups exercise and maintain power over
others. If this seems a far-fetched assertion, a matter of private prejudice, we
may test it out by an account of the rise of 'literature' in England.
Burgess

sciences and arts

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