Summary of "What is Literature?" by Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton was a student of Raymond Williams, the famous theorist who published the book 'Keywords'. Eagleton does not straight arrive on his argument and state evidence to prove his statement. In stead he examines all the ideas proposed about Literature, all the definitions provided for the same, then gradually unpacks them and finally points out his problems with them. Towards the end he arrives at his own idea and tries to define what Literature is. Mr. Pinto suggested that students take this route of reasoning while writing their research papers so that they do not end up summarizing their own argument in the first paragraph itself and would be exhausted. Descartes also emphasized on the importance of doubt in order to attain knowledge.

Some of the immediate ideas that Eagleton throws in are following:
He first examines if Literature is imaginative fiction or just fact. Literature can't be just one of these because it spans from newspapers to philosophical treatises to novels and poems. While newspapers maybe purportedly reporting facts and daily happenings, one may wonder why so many newspapers exist to do the same work. Though the question and its answer cannot be so simple, one can see that readership of different newspapers is dictated by the interesting/informative/humorous nature of reporting which distinguishes each paper. Also, this definition of literature seems to exclude texts that transcend pure writing like manga or comic books.

Then he comes to the formalist argument about literature. Mr Pinto first briefly explained why the fascination with formalism. It is so because formalism tried to break away from the existing norm and resorted to examining the medium itself: language. The Formalist definition: Literature is organized violence committed on ordinary speech. This definition focuses on how for a text to be valued as literature, the importance is to write in a certain way and use a particular register. This can be marked as the linguistic turn in literature. Register in linguistic simply means a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. Looking at register as a "formality scale" and placing it in context of literature's formalist definition, we can say that when one shifted to using "very formal/printed word" language or "formal/archaic" words that were not used in ordinary conversation, the writing written so could be qualified as literature. Otherwise, as the signifier does not refer to the commonly known signified, for example, "thou unravished bride of quietness" (it is not necessary that the person is talking about the bride or it is not even necessary that the bride should exist). Formalists defy reference to such quasi mystical symbolism and draw attention to material reality. Formalists say that literature (poetry was particularly talked about) is not a vehicle for content/ideas because what is written could have been written by anybody else located in that time under those conditions. Preethi then asked, if this is not contradictory to the formalist argument of rejecting social background and its influence on the author's life and work. Mr Pinto agreed that it was indeed one of the shortcomings of the theory but even so, formalists paid more attention to the forms of writing like satire, allegory etc and explained that it is the nature of the form that makes the content what it becomes in the end.

Talking about estrangement, Eagleton says that if content is removed out of context and its own social reality, like Shakespeare read in today's time, it is estranged. One cannot comprehend it in context of social reality and it results in delayed gratification causing increase in interest. Thus, what is estranged might be sometimes qualified as literature. But this does not hold ground because even when misread/interpreted out of context, work does not cease to make sense completely because of the way people relate in their own ways to it irrespective of their social or chronological frames. So, we can say that literature has no "essence" or inherent common quality/ies across all the texts that are included in literature but rather something to do with the way the reader relates to it makes it literature. Mr. Pinto stated that Literature received its non-pragmatic license and special aura only after Romanticism.

But Literature cannot only be what people think it is because then everything will be literature. So, then literature is something that a particular group relates to for some reason and values it. What could be the possible reasons? Practicality/usefulness is not the reason because otherwise, Mill and Bentham would also be included in literature. The reasons change from time to time based on the values and concerns of that period. For example, Matthew Arnold emphasized on serious literature and Eliot did not regard Wordsworth as worthy of reading and brought in John Donne who until then was never considered. So, we can safely conclude with the help of the last paragraph of his essay that the preferences of people who are in a capacity to decide what constitutes literature are shaped by larger structures and value systems, those of class and other categories. We can also replace the larger preferences which can be classified into categories as ideology(?)

Eagleton concludes saying "