LITERARY THEORY BY TERRY EAGLETON

I. WHAT IS LITERATURE?
There have been several attempts to define literature –
a. Imaginative writing – not literally true – in the sense of fiction BUT not enough.
Distinction b/w fact vs fiction blurring: historical vs artistic truth – the word ‘novel’ –
news reports. Also, Genesis – fact or fiction? – Superman Comics – Literature or not?
If literature is creative and imaginative, are history and other sciences not?
b. Uses language in peculiar ways - in the words of the Russian critic Roman Jakobson,
represents an 'organized violence committed on ordinary speech' – unlike everyday
speech – definition of ‘literary’ as advanced by Russian Formalists: Viktor Shklovsky,
Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik, Yury Tynyanov, Boris Eichenbaum and Boris
Tomashevsk –
i. Emerged in Russia in 1917, flourished through all of 1920s until silenced by
Stalinism (around 1927-28).
ii. Rejected quasi-mystical symbolist doctrines and focused on the working and
organisation of language.
iii. Literary work – not the reflection of author’s mind – not objects or feelings – not
a vehicle for ideas or social reality BUT material fact, something that could be
analysed like a machine.
iv. Application of linguistics to the study of literature – literary form over literary
content.
v. Deforming and estrangement of the ordinary language - making daily
‘automatized’ language more ‘perceptible’ – uses devices and functions - Viktor
Shklovsky remarked mischievously of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, a
novel which impedes its own story-line so much that it hardly gets off the
ground, that it was 'the most typical novel in world literature'.
vi. It is special vs ordinary language – but ordinary is different in different contexts
– what is ordinary/special in one place might not be so in another place – “The
idea that there is a single 'normal' language, a common currency shared equally
by all members of society, is an illusion.”
vii. Even all linguistic ‘deviations aren’t poetic (example: slang) – therefore,
analysing any past societies won’t be an easy task – “For the Formalists, in other
 words, 'literariness' was a function of the differential relations between one sort
of discourse and another; it was not an eternally given property. They were not
out to define 'literature', but 'literariness' - special uses of language, which could
be found in 'literary' texts but also in many places outside them.”
viii. “To think of literature as the Formalists do is really to think of all literature as
poetry.” – the problem of context – a line may not look literary in language but
its larger context might tell that its literary – “And what about jokes, football
chants and slogans, newspaper headlines, advertisements, which are often
verbally flamboyant but not generally classified as literature?”
ix. Problems with this definition persist – the way something is said becomes more
important than what is said which might have been the primary purpose of the
author to begin with.
c. “Literature cannot in fact be 'objectively' defined. It leaves the definition of literature
up to how somebody decides to read.”
d. “A piece of writing may start off life as history or philosophy and then come to be
ranked as literature; or it may start off as literature and then come to be valued for its
archaeological significance. Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness,
and some have literariness thrust upon them. Breeding in this respect may count for a
good deal more than birth.” – no inherent qualities in literature or language but just
about how people relate to it.
e. If literature is ‘fine’ writing, then bad literature shouldn’t exist?
i. Perhaps this means that the writing which can be passed as eligible to be
judged as fine or not would be literature – this means that the piece of writing
that enough value is attributed to should pass as literature.
ii. ‘Value- Judgement’- but aren’t value judgements notoriously variable? And
don’t values change with time? – people may change their minds about what is
considered valuable and therefore what is considered literature.
iii. They may still consider it literature (possibly inferior) but the meaning of
might change is the so called ‘literary canon’ – “Karl Marx was troubled by
the question of why ancient Greek art retained an 'eternal charm', even though
the social conditions which produced it had long passed; but how do we know
that it will remain 'eternally' charming, since history has not yet ended?”
iv. It may even be that people in different contexts have valued or devalued one
work not in the same way which means they might have found different
 elements to value or devalue in a certain work – “All literary works, in other
words, are 'rewritten', if only unconsciously, by the societies which read them”
– therefore, what counts as literature is a notably unstable affair.
v. This does not mean that value – judgements are ‘subjective’ necessarily.
Because even facts might attract different values in different contexts. The
example of a museum tour where stating the year of origin (fact) may not be
deemed of enough value compared to another arbitrary characteristic like the
kin od architecture.
vi. A FAMOUS STUDY - Practical Criticism (1929), the Cambridge critic I. A.
Richards - The resulting judgements, notoriously, were highly variable: time-
honoured poets were marked down and obscure authors celebrated - how they
responded to a poem depended on a good deal more than purely 'literary'
factors. Their critical responses were deeply entwined with their broader
prejudices and beliefs - no such thing as a 'pure' literary critical judgement or
interpretation.

II. RISE OF ENGLISH

a. 18th CENTURY – Literature was not just ‘creative or ‘imaginative’ writing BUT
‘valued’ and ideological - the values and 'tastes' of a particular social class -
philosophy, history, essays and letters as well as poems were a YES – Novel was
probably a NO, so were a street ballad, a popular romance and perhaps even the
drama.
i. Literature – not just a reflection of society but a vital instrument for the
dissemination of moral values.
ii. Preceding century – bloody civil war, conflict between social classes.
iii. Therefore, a drive to reconsolidate the shaken social order – to unify the middle
classes with the aristocracy for retention of ‘good’ morals - neo-classical notions
of Reason, Nature, order and propriety - ideological institutions: periodicals,
coffee houses, social and aesthetic treatises, sermons, classical translations,
guidebooks to manners and morals.
iv. Felt experience, personal response, imaginative uniqueness was a NO and
Rene Wellek and Austin Warren’s Theory of Literature (1948, 1955, 1962).
Narrative Criticism, Walter Fisher
Close reading
Cognitive narratology: It is an anglicisation of French narratologie, coined by Tzvetan Todorov (969).
Its theoretical lineage is traceable to Aristotle (Poetics) but modern narratology is agreed to have
begun with the Russian Formalists, particularly Vladimir Propp (Morphology of the Folktale, 1928),
and Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of heteroglossia, dialogism, and the chronotope first presented in The
Dialogic Imagination (1975).

Russian Formalism refers to the work of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ)
founded in 1916 in St. Petersburg (then Petrograd) by Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky, Osip
Brik, Boris Tomashevsky and Yury Tynyanov, and secondarily to the Moscow Linguistic Circle
founded in 1914 by Roman Jakobson. (The folklorist Vladimir Propp is also often associated with the
movement.) Eichenbaum's 1926 essay "The Theory of the 'Formal Method'" (translated in Lemon and
Reis) provides an economical overview of the approach the Formalists advocated.
Shklovsky: defamiliarization, plot/story distinction

Russian Revolution 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

Critique of Formalism: Leon Trotsky's Literature and Revolution (1924). The leaders of the
movement suffered political persecution beginning in the 1920s, when Joseph Stalin came to power,
which largely put an end to their inquiries. But their ideas continued to influence subsequent thinkers,
partly due to Tzvetan Todorov's translations of their works in the 1960s and 1970s.

I.A. RICHARDS - Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) and The Meaning of
Meaning (1923; with C.K. Ogden).
Close reading
During the 1930s, Richards spent much of his time developing Basic English, a system originated by
Ogden that employed only 850 words to bring about universal understanding.
1942 - published a version of Plato’s Republic in Basic English.
Laid the foundations of New Criticism
In The Principles of Literary Criticism, Richards discusses the subjects of form, value, rhythm,
coenaesthesia (an awareness of inhabiting one's body, caused by stimuli from various organs), literary
infectiousness, allusiveness, divergent readings, and belief. He starts from the premise that “A book is
a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the
locomotive.”
Practical Criticism is an empirical study.
The theory of ambiguity, was developed in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), by William Empson, a
former student of Richards'; moreover, additional to The Principles of Literary Criticism and Practical
Criticism, it became the third foundational document for the methodology of the New Criticism.

New Rhetoric
The Semantic Triangle
Coined the term ‘feedforward’ in 1941
He served as mentor and teacher to other prominent critics, most notably William Empson and F. R.
Leavis, though Leavis was contemporary with Richards, Empson much younger.
Cleanth Brooks and Allen Tate

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry (1821)

Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry (1595)

WILLIAM MORRIS (late 19th Century) - a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, essays, and translations
of ancient and medieval texts. Learnt Icelandic languages and published translations. Pre- Raphaelite.
Popular for imaginative fictions and fantasy fictions. Attempts to revive the genre of medieval
romance.
Arts and Crafts movement in England and revolutionized Victorian taste.
Socialism and Marxism.
Harnessed this Romantic humanism to the cause of the working-class movement and the gap between
poetic vision and political practice was significantly narrowed.

VICTORIAN AGE – ENGLISH LITERATURE REPLACED RELIGION – acted as a moral guide to

the middle class to keep them close to the nobility of the now falling aristocratic class and as a manual
of how to behave for the working class.

MATTHEW ARNOLD – operating in the late Victorian Age (1822-88) – considered a sage poet -
elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857, and he was the first in this position to deliver his
lectures in English rather than in Latin - On Translating Homer (1861) - Culture and Anarchy (1867-
68-69) - The Popular Education of France (1861) - Democracy (1879) - Essays in Criticism: First
Series (1865) - Essays in Criticism: Second Series (1888) – Culture and Anarchy (1869) - Literature
and Dogma (1873)
Sometimes called the third great Victorian poet, along with Alfred Lord Tennyson and Robert
Browning - "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", is one of the most influential essays
written on the role of the critic in identifying and elevating literature — even while admitting, "The
critical power is of lower rank than the creative." Comparing himself to the French liberal essayist
Ernest Renan, who sought to inculcate morality in France, Arnold saw his role as inculcating
intelligence in England - He also sought for literary criticism to remain disinterested, and said that the
appreciation should be of "the object as in itself it really is."
Did a critique of the spirit of his age - "Philistines" the term for Victorian middle class -
popularisation of the phrase "sweetness and light," first coined by Jonathan Swift – called himself a
liberal - vigorously attacked the Nonconformists and the arrogance of "the great Philistine middle-
class, the master force in our politics." – he believed that a close reading and attachment to the
cultural classics, coupled with critical reflection was essential – ‘aristocratic liberalism’

Key work – Culture and Anarchy (1869)

the “Barbarians” (the aristocracy), the “Philistines” (the commercial middle class), and the
“Populace.”
The study of poetry from 1888 volume – key ideas - we will “turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to
console us, to sustain us.” Therefore, we must know how to distinguish the best poetry from the
inferior, the genuine from the counterfeit – poetry will have to replace religion.

God and the Bible (1875), and Last Essays on Church and Religion (1877).

It is significant, then, that 'English' as an academic subject was first institutionalized not in the
Universities, but in the Mechanics' Institutes, working men's colleges and extension lecturing
circuits." English was literally the poor man's Classics - a way of providing a cheapish 'liberal'
education for those beyond the charmed circles of public school and Oxbridge.
From the outset, in the work of 'English' pioneers like F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, the
emphasis was on solidarity between the social classes, the cultivation of 'larger sympathies', the
instillation of national pride and the transmission of 'moral' values.
Historic shift in the very meaning of morality – Arnold, Henry James and F.R. Leavis.

F.R. LEAVIS – (1895-1978) -