What Is Literature

Synopsis:

Terry Eagleton starts the chapter by saying that we need to know what literature is before going ahead.
She says that Literature is ‘imaginative’ and ‘fictional’. According to this, it tells untrue fictionalized
stories. If we believe in that then it becomes a categorized definition and any piece of writing that is not
imaginary and fictional, cannot qualify as literature. This is the first question Eagleton raises in the start.
Next she argues that if literature is ‘creative’ and ‘imaginative’ then what about history, philosophy and
other natural sciences, are these not imaginary?

Then she goes to Russian Formalists who say that Literature has nothing to do with ‘imagination’,
actually it is the language that makes it literature. They say that content can be noting but motivation.
Some critics claims that Literature is connected to social realities but it is not critic’s job to examine it.
Formalists say that by using several ‘devices’ it creates defamilarizing effects. This is the core
characteristic of literary language that it is different from ordinary language. Here Eagleton argues that
Literature turns into be an estranged form from ordinary language, at the same time it paradoxically
enriches reader’s understanding and makes us more experienced.

If literary language is a set of deviations from ordinary language then who will decide that what is
literary what is not. The scale to measure literariness is based on social discourses. Next she says that if
a language becomes estrange according to linguistic rules then who will decide that it is still poetic.
Formalists are upto define ‘literariness’ instead of Literature.

Literature is taken as self-referential sometimes and non-pragmatic. Here Eagleton claims that any
writing can be read as ‘non-pragmatically’ if it is the core reason to be literature. Some critics say that
Literature tells us about what we do and not about the fixed being of things.

Formalists say that any written work is measured with the scale ‘fine writing’ but Eagleton’s stance is
that it is upto the reader or the society to decide what is fine or bad, in which it is produced.

Eagleton says that not any definition of Literature can be taken as perfect. Literature is determined
‘subjectively’ but paradoxically this ‘subjectivity’ is also constructed by social discourses and the ideology
we follow.