Shahab-e-Saqib

His full name is Terrance Francis Eagleton, born in 22 Feb. 1943, Salford. He was an English critic, novelist, essayist, nonfiction writer, screen writer and play wright.

His father worked as an engineer.  Terry attended local school before studying at Cambridge University, where he received his B.A in 1964. He earned his PH.D at Cambridge in 1968.

Terry is regarded as one of Britain, s most influential living literary critic.

Eagleton best known for literary theory, which has become a popular instructional text among academies. In this work Eagleton not only survey such major literary theories as structuralism semiotics, and phenomenology, but also discussed the historical and ideological conditions behind each theory to demonstrate its limitations as well as its significance.

Literature is merely made of language, which differs between people groups beliefs, maturity and so on, language is just pattern of sounds, devices,rythms,literary content is use of language for a specific purpose and end. If literature is a language “anything can be a language” the jump from language to literature is just in giving the words more meaning than just its practical definition.

Mr. Pinto said "if there is any theory answers this question it must encompass all its dimensions, and even if one of the dimensions is missing the theory fails.

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.

 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. It is because Literature uses the language in peculiar ways that it is different from everyday 'normal' way of speech.Roman Jacobson speaks of Literature as “organized violence committed on ordinary speech".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 moreover 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, meter, 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".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, and litotes and so on- which are not quite intensively used in daily 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 they 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.

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 recognized 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.

Famous book

•             The event of literature

•             Literary Theory

•             Why Marx was right

•             How to read a poem

•             The meaning of life