Eagleton’s Literary Theory: Definition, Ideology, and Concepts
Eagleton: What is Literature?
1. Criteria for a Definition of Literature
Literature (LIT): Literature uses language in its own way, transforming and intensifying ordinary language. It is defined not according to whether it is imaginative fiction, but because the language is used in particular ways.
2. Literariness
Literariness is the special use of language distinct from ordinary language. It can be found in literary texts and also outside these. It refers to the term as a function of the differential relations of effect a type of discourse and is a feature that changes. It is not permanent.
3. Position of the Formalists
Literature is a peculiar organization of language with its own laws, structures, and components. Their operation can be analyzed and studied in the same way as a machine. Formalists prioritize form over content. Literary language deviates from the norm, representing an organized linguistic disruption, a special kind of language contrary to everyday language.
4. Literature Defined
Literature consists of texts with an imaginary or fictional sense, texts that are not literally true. It is a type of writing that presents an organized linguistic disruption committed in common discourse, a kind of special language contrary to ordinary language. It is a non-pragmatic speech, a type of self-referential language.
5. Objection to the Author’s Discretion
The author argues that the special uses of language are also found in everyday objects and in the formalist approach. He posits that literary language is not exclusive to literature.
6. What is Ideology?
Ideology is how we perceive, feel, believe, and value. It is determined by the structures and power relations established previously. The relationship to literature varies because our ideologies allow us to determine what is important and what is not.
7. Literature is Variable
Literature is variable because people are different, with different values and ways of interpreting ideology.
8. Literary Concepts
- Allegory: A figure of speech that uses a succession of metaphors to express a straight and a figurative sense, in order to understand a thing expressed by a different one.
- Alliteration: A figure of speech that conspicuously repeats the same sounds, especially consonants, in a word or phrase.
- Ambiguity: The possibility that something can be understood in different ways or that allows for different interpretations.
- Climax: The culminating moment of a literary work.
- Imagery: The use of a word or expression to give a vivid idea of something.
- Litotes: A figure of speech that expresses an idea by negating its opposite, implying the intended meaning.
- Metaphor: A figure of speech consisting of using a word or phrase for something else, establishing an unspoken analogy between them.
- Meter: The art of rhythm, structure, size, and combination of verses.
- Metonymy: A figure of speech that appoints one thing with the name of another with which it bears a relation of cause and effect, author of his work, and so on.
- Paradox: A figure of thought that uses expressions or phrases that express contradiction.
- Rhyme: Complete or partial equality between the sounds of two or more words from the last accented syllable.
- Rhythm: Smooth and regular arrangement, based on the accents and the number of syllables, which can be established in the language.
- Synecdoche: A trope that extends, restricts, or alters the meaning of words to designate one thing with the name of one of its parts, or vice versa.
- Texture: Structure, disposition of the parts of a work, and so on.