Terry Eagleton
Literary Theory
An Introduction
More on criticism and ideology:
There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from the beginning. I mean by the political no more than the way we organize our social life together, and the power relations this involves; … the history of modern literary theory is part of the political and ideological history of our epoch. … Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times. Eagleton, Literary Theory (169)
In other words, the study of criticism reveals the ideologies that pervade a place and time. The critic is both arbiter of that ideology – being a powerful force in its construction – and an at times unwitting victim – unable to escape the very same power structures he drags under his pen to critique.
On the question of what is literature:
John M. Ellis has argued that the term ‘literature’ operates rather like the word ‘weed’: weeds are not particular kinds of plant, but just any kind of plant which for some reason or another a gardener does not want around. Perhaps ‘literature’ means something like the opposite: any kind of writing which for some reason or another somebody values highly. Eagleton, Literary Theory (8)
Similarly:
New typography thus resisted the idea that literature should enjoy a separate, special status: it was another design problem. And perhaps more interesting than ‘literature’ for new typographers were industrial catalogues and other texts with complex problems of ordering and configuration to be resolved. Kinross, Modern Typography (117)
Of course, what you value reveals a lot about who you are – and what you want of the world around you.
