What is Literature by Terry Eagleton

What is literature?- Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton, in his essay challenges all the definitions of Literature that have been put forth and challenges
the basic understanding of literature that we have. In fact he rejects the idea of any "basic understanding" of
what is literature.

Literature as Imaginative writing

 He begins with Literature being defined as imaginative writing.
 With imaginative/fictional/creative writing such as works by Shakespeare, Milton etc. other works
which were not exactly fiction or imaginative writing were included as a part for English Literature. Example:
Sermons of John Donne, Madame De Sevigne's letters to her daughter, philosophy of Descartes and
Pascal.
 There was no clear distinction between 'fact' and 'fiction'.
 In the late 16th and early 17th century 'novel' used both factual and fictional events and even news
reports were not considered purely factual.
 Genesis read as fact by some and fiction by others.Therefore no clear cut difference between fact and
fiction.
 Moreover, if one still goes by this definition, there are many works of fiction that are not considered to
be Literature. Example: Mills and boon, Superman comics, Sidney Sheldon.
 "If literature is 'creative' or 'imaginative' writing, does this imply that history, philosophy and natural
science are uncreative and unimaginative?"

Literature as 'writing' that uses peculiar language

 It is because Literature uses the language in peculiar ways that it is different from everyday 'normal'
way of speech.
 Roman Jakobson, speaks of Literature as "organised violence committed on ordinary speech".
 Disproportion between signifier and signified: A mismatch between the signifier and the signified. For
example when in Macbeth you read the line "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow..." you know that the
character is talking of eternal bore dome and not of the literal meaning of the word 'tomorrow' therefore
creating a mismatch in the signifier (tomorrow) and the signified (the next day).
 By bringing in peculiarity the language draws attention to itself. This is the reason when you read a
fairy tale that starts with "Once upon a time..." you know that there is no real history associated with the line
but it refers to a time in the story therefore drawing attention to itself or the text present in front of you.
 "The formalists started out by seeing the literary work as a more or less arbitrary assemblage of
'devices' , and only later came to see these devices as interrelated elements or 'functions' within a total
textual system.
 These devices included imagery, sound, rhythm, syntax, metre, rhyme, narrative techniques etc.
 These devices were used as literary elements to 'defamiliarise' or 'estrangement'.
 In other words, "It was language 'made strange'; and because of this estrangement, the everyday
world was also suddenly made unfamiliar".
 What he is trying to imply here is that in our everyday routine we get so used to the usual things that
we hardly notice them, we become "as Formalists would say 'automatised', Literature, by forcing us into a
dramatic awareness of language, refreshes these habitual responses and renders objects more perceptile."
 By defamiliarising or alienating us from the text or ordinary speech gives a fuller understand or a kind
of revelation or the same experience. Its like after you have a fight or an argument, you sit alone and do a
flashback of what happened and you try to hear your own words and put yourself in the other person's
shoes and realise the damage that you might have done by saying certain things. In this process you are
looking at your behaviour from outside, or other person's perspective, hence estranging yourself from you,
and in the process gaining a better understanding of yourself.
  "Most of the time we breathe in air without being conscious of it: like language, it is the very medium
in which we move. But if the air is suddenly thickened or infected we are forced to attend to our breathing
with new vigilance and the effect of this may be a heightened experience of our bodily life.”
Literature as something special
 Then literature was looked by the formalists as a 'special' kind of language in contrast to the 'ordinary'
language that we commonly use.
 But the problem here arises is that there is no universal 'ordinary' language. In other words the so
called ordinary/common language is different for different classes, gender, region, status and so on.
 "One person's norm may be another deviation"
 Same is the case with 'estrangement' mentioned earlier. A piece of writing might estranging is one
context or community but not so in certain other. Example: in a particular society if everyone uses the
sentence "shall I compare thee to a summer's day.." in everyday life it will not be estranging to that society
anymore.
 "Anyone who believes that 'literature' can be defined by such special uses of language has to face the
fact that there is more metaphor in Manchester than there is in Marvell. There is no 'literary' device -
metonymy, synecdoche, litotes and so on- which are not quite intensively used in daily discourse"
 Another reason why considering 'estrangement' as the definition is problematic is that any piece of
writing or sentence can be read as estranging.
 Example: a sign that reads -'Dogs must be carried on the escalator.' as unambiguous as it seems at
first a close look at it reveals its ambiguity. Does it mean that you must carry a dog on the escalator, and in
failing to do so you will be banned from the escalator?
 Also a drunk person may see hidden meanings in various hoardings or even road signs giving it
cosmic significance.
Literature as a non-pragmatic discourse
 When we read a poem referring to a woman as lovely as a rose, the poet is telling about women and
love in general. Therefore, we look at literature as non-pragmatic/practical as against a physics textbook.
 The problem with this way of defining is that non-practicality of a text cannot be defined objectively.
Which means that it depends on how a reader prefers to read the text.
 A reader can prefer to read Gibbon's account of Roman empire for information or prose style and so
on.
 "A piece of writing may start off like life as history or philosophy and then come to be ranked as
literature; or it may start off as literature and them come to be valued for its archaeological significance."
 "What matters may not be where you came from but how people treat you."
 Therefore, Eagleton says, there is no essence of literature because any writing can be read non-
pragmatically.
Value-Judgements
 Consider literature as being a highly valued kind of writing. If this were true, then any writing can be
considered as literature. For me a letter written by my mother to be will hold a value higher than any piece
of writing by Shakespeare. Therefore, a value given to any writing must be subjective.
 Values on the other hand are variable and change from time to time.
 "The so-called 'literary canon', the unquestioned 'great tradition' of the 'national literature', has to be
recognised as a construct, fashioned by particular people for particular time. There is no such thing as a
literary work or tradition which is valuable in itself, regardless of what anyone might have said or come to
say about it."
 By which Eagleton suggests that the value that any writing enjoys is the value given to it by certain
literary canon, or authority and is subject to change.
 Yet here he also says that value- judgements are unstable does not mean that they are subjective.
 Value-judgements depends on the value system and social ideologies that one belongs to.
For conclusion please read the last paragraph of the essay.

I think that this a very clear case of what Derrida calls Deconstruction, where Terry Eagleton has picked
'literature' and by taking all the existing definitions he has proved that there is nothing called literature.