The question of “What is Literature?” has been raised so many times, by so many scholars and researchers, yet it still remains open to discussion; since no answer seems to encompass everything that we tend to call “literature”. In that regard, Terry Eagleton‟s introduction, is one of the most known to have tried to define “Literature”.
Review of “What is Literature? by Terry Eagleton.”
The question of “What is Literature?” has been raised so many times, by so many scholars and researchers, yet it still remains open to discussion; since no answer seems to encompass everything that we tend to call “literature”. In that regard, Terry Eagleton‟s introduction, is one of the most known to have tried to define “Literature”.
The first definition that comes to mind when one tends to think about literature according to Eagleton‟s, is the question of fact vs. fiction. Some tend to believe that literature is “imaginative” writing; putting therefore literature in opposition to factual and/or historical writing. Yet this distinction has some flaws, and one of the best examples is the one provided by Terry Eagleton when he says that “Superman comics” are fiction but not regarded as literature. We can therefore understand that the claim that literature refers to “imaginative writing” isn‟t going to take us that far.
If literature does not and cannot refer only to what is “imaginative” or “fictional” writing. Maybe it refers to a certain “peculiar” use of language. Literature therefore can be seen as a deviation from everyday language, or as described by Roman Jacobson as an “organized violence committed on ordinary speech”. This view according to Eagleton is the formalistic view of literature. In sum, its focus wasn‟t on content but on form. The formalists only regarded literature as a „particular organization of language‟. Formalism according to Eagleton was only „the application of linguistics to the study of literature‟. Content was therefore secondary, not to say unnecessary, to the formalists. This view of literature is criticized by literary theorist Terry Eagleton. He argues that to claim that literature is a
„special kind of language‟ presupposes the existence of a „normal‟ or „ordinary‟ language; while, according to Eagleton, the view that there is such thing as a „normal‟ language „shared
equally among all members of society is an illusion‟. In sum, the formalistic view of literature, or as it is claimed by Eagleton of „literariness‟, was in relation to the „differential‟ relations between one sort of discourse and another; which is in itself not an inherent property. Another problem with this view is that it sees the way in which something is said/written as being more important than what is actually discussed. That is if we decide to treat literature “non-pragmatically”, we can forget about any objective definition of literature, because as advocated by Eagleton, in claiming that, we are also leaving the definition of literature to „how somebody decides to read‟ it, not to the inherent „nature of what is written‟. Eagleton continues in his discussion and adds that any piece of writing can be read „non- pragmatically‟, as any text can be read „poetically‟. Therefore, literature cannot be judged as being simply a discourse that must be read “non-pragmatically”.
Indeed, value-judgements surely have a lot to do with how we tend to see something as literature or not. This leads Eagleton to claim that there is absolutely no objective definition of „literature‟. That there is no such writing that is immutably literary. We can only understand that since literature has a lot to do with value-judgements, and since values refers to „whatever is valued by certain people in specific situations, according to particular criteria and in the light of given purposes‟, we can clearly understand the very crucial point suggested by Eagleton when he says that “all literary works… are „rewritten‟ if only unconsciously by the societies which read them; indeed there is no reading of work which is not also a „re- writing‟”. This is indeed a very significant point made by Eagleton, we can understand that no piece of „literature‟ can be unfolded to a group of people without being changed; and this is exactly why „literature‟ remains an „unstable affair‟.
We‟ve seen how different trials of defining literature lead to each other, only to get us as far as seeing literature as an „unstable affair‟ that can never be scrutinized in an objective manner. Yet the claim that what we tend to see as „literature‟ has a lot to do with value-
judgements, is a very interesting one, for we can understand that „ideology‟ has a lot to do with what we tend to view as „literature‟. Put more crudely, one can say that the social groups in power wants us to consider certain piece of writings as „literature‟ and others as not. This can only push us to think that by reading what a certain society considers as „literature‟ we may understand a lot, about this given society. We also understand that for „literature‟ to be under so much invisible schemes, then it may only have a very crucial impact on the reproduction of social inequalities and power relations, this is why „literature‟ has come to be the slave of the social groups in power, for whom there are always social goods at stake.
Amine Zidouh
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- Amine Zidouh (Autor), 2012, Review of Terry Eagleton's "What is Literature?", Múnich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/192313
