Literary Theory: An Introduction

234 Pages·2008·13.57 MB·english

by  Terry Eagleton

Literary Theory
This page intentionally left blank
Literary Theory
An Introduction
Terry Eagleton
With a New Preface
ANNIVERSARY EDITION
M
IN
NE
SO
TA
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
For
Charles Swann
and
Raymond Williams
Copyright Terry Eagleton 1983, 1996, 2008
First published in this edition in Great Britain by
Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
First published in this edition in the United States in 2008 by
the University of Minnesota Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in the United States by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eagleton, Terry, 1943-
Literary theory : an introduction / Terry Eagleton. — Anniversary ed.
p. cm.
With a new preface.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5447-5 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Criticism—History—20th century. 2. Literature—
History and criticism—Theory, etc. I. Title.
PN94.E2 2008b
801'.95—dc22
2008006964
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Contents
Preface to the Anniversary Edition vii
Preface xi
Introduction: What is Literature? 1
1. The Rise of English 15
2. Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory 47
3. Structuralism and Semiotics 79
4. Post-Structuralism 110
5. Psychoanalysis 131
Conclusion: Political Criticism 169
Afterword 190
Notes 209
Bibliography 217
Index 224
This page intentionally left blank
Preface to the
Anniversary Edition
This book is now a quarter of a century old, but if it seems somewhat longer
in the tooth than that it is perhaps because so much has happened since it
first appeared. One such development is that literary theory no longer oc-
cupies the commanding place that it seemed to have twenty-five years ago.
When this book was first written, theory, like the latest Jean-Luc Godard
movie, was new, foreign, subversive, enigmatic, and exciting. Some students
still rightly find it all these things, but, just as the shock of modernist art
was eventually absorbed until, as Fredric Jameson once remarked, Joyce's
Ulysses came to seem really quite a conventional sort of story, so theory
is no longer the outlandish affair that it once was. Indeed, as I note in the
Afterword to this book, we have witnessed in recent times the growth of a
kind of anti-theory—though one that is itself of theoretical interest. In this,
it differs from the usual philistine objections to theory, which for the most
part reflect more of an animus than an argument.
Has theory, then, become "institutionalized"? The question cannot be
answered properly if the word "institutionalized" (a term that carries sinis-
ter connotations of syringes and straitjackets) is taken in a purely pejorative
sense. That theory is now widely taught in academic institutions is to be
commended, not condemned as some sort of squalid capitulation. Things
have changed for the better since I taught Marxist theory every week at
Oxford in the early 1970s in an informal session which was not even adver-
tised on the university lecture list, which was widely disapproved of by my
colleagues, and which operated less like an orthodox seminar than a kind of
refuge for ideologically battered students. Most students of literature can
viii Preface to the Anniversary Edition
now expect a theory course or two to be on offer, a fact that one naturally
welcomes.
Yet perhaps this is a kind of capitulation, or at least a troubling compro-
mise, since theory was never intended simply to take its place alongside Great
Books courses as yet another product to attract the punters in the intellec-
tual marketplace. To see it in this way is to misunderstand the kind of thing
that it is. Theory at its best poses questions to these other pursuits, rather
than meekly coexisting with them as one option among others. Rather than
simply providing new methods for the study of literary works, it asks about
the nature and function of literature and the literary institution. Rather than
simply supplying us with yet more sophisticated ways of tackling canonical
texts, it inquires into the very concept of canonicity. Its aim is not just to
help us to see what literary works mean, or how valuable they are; instead,
it queries our commonsense notions of what it is to "mean" in the first place,
and poses questions about the criteria by which we evaluate literary art. To
place a course of theory alongside a course on moon symbolism in D. H.
Lawrence is to commit what the philosophers would call a category mistake.
It would be like studying Marxism simply as one variant of sociology, rather
than grasping the point that Marxism is a critique of the very concept of
sociology. Academia, by its very structure, tends to encourage these sorts of
conceptual mistakes. Like the marketplace, it juxtaposes sometimes incom-
parable things.
Properly understood, then, literary theory is a kind of metadiscourse.
Rather than figuring as one way of speaking about literature among others,
it adopts a critical stance to other forms of critical analysis. In particular, it
tends to suspect that much of what is said is question-begging. Critics may
ask whether a particular narrative twist is effective, but narratologists want
to know what this strange animal called narrative is, and are reluctant to
be fobbed off with our intuitive sense that everyone can recognize a story
when they see one. If the critic discerns, say, Jungian patterns in a novel,
the theorist is keen to know what "novel" actually means. Can it be defined?
How does a short novel differ from a long short story? Critics may wrangle
over whether Oscar Wilde is a major or minor writer, but theorists prefer
to investigate the (often unconscious) norms and criteria by which we make
such judgments. All reading involves interpretation, but hermeneutics in-
quires into what goes on when we interpret. A critic might speak of a literary
character's unconscious; a theorist is more likely to ask what a "character"
is, and whether the text can have an unconscious, too. What has happened
over the past couple of decades is that what one might risk calling "pure" or
"high" theory is no longer so much in fashion. There is less talk of semiot-
Preface to the Anniversary Edition ix
ics, hermeneutics, poststructuralism, and phenomenology than in the 1970s
and 1980s. Even psychoanalytic theory is somewhat less prominent than
it used to be, despite its intellectual seductions and allures. Instead, post-
modernism and postcolonialism have captured the commanding heights
of the subject, along with a weakened yet surviving feminism. This is an
interesting evolution, because it signals a shift from the rarefied peaks of
pure theory to the troughs and plains of everyday culture. The same might
be said of the so-called New Historicism that flourished in the 1980s and
1990s. Feminism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism are all much more
than literary phenomena. This is true of "pure" theory as well, very little of
which actually had its origin in the literary arena. Phenomenology, herme-
neutics, and poststructuralism are philosophical currents; psychoanalysis is
a curative practice; semiotics is a science of signs in general, not just literary
ones. The New Historicism tried to erase the distinction between literary
and nonliterary works, as structuralism had also done in its day. Even so, to
speak in the same breath of, say, poststructuralism and postmodernism, or
semiotics and postcolonialism, is to commit another category mistake. The
first two items of these pairs are bodies of theory, while the second are cul-
tural and political realities. To imagine that they are more or less the same
would be like equating Heidegger's philosophy to global warming. This, too,
is the kind of error that academia may tempt us to make.
This return to everyday cultural and political life is clearly to be welcomed.
Yet there is, as usual, a price to be paid. Pure theory may have its problems,
but its very distance from the everyday allows it to act from time to time as
a powerful critique of it. There is, in fact, a concealed Utopian dimension
to much of this thought. Poststructuralism dreams of a time when rigid
hierarchies and oppressive polarities will be prised open, to release a play
of difference and diversity. Whatever the slippages involved in the act of
interpretation, hermeneutics continues to pledge its faith in the possibility
of human understanding. Reception theory (with its implicit slogan "More
power to the reader!") seeks to liberate the reader from the passive, meekly
conformist status he or she has so far been allotted by the critics, seeing
readers instead as agents and cocreators. Behind this theoretical current the
demands of the 1960s student movement can be dimly sensed.
This is not the case with much postmodernist theory. To be sure, there
is a radical wing to it, but for the more complacent forms of postmodernist
thought, pluralism, multiculturalism, and a respect for human difference
are about as good as it gets. It is hard to see this as an adequate politics in a
world where the mightiest capitalist power in history holds the rest of the
world to ransom. It is characteristic of Marxism that it refuses a retreat