How to Read Literature by Terry Eagleton (PDF)

Description

A literary master’s entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasure What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience.In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling to Jane Austen and Samuel Beckett.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The institutional economist John Kenneth Galbraith once made the succinct and witty judgment that writing a book is inevitably an exercise in ego. Given that he was a prolific author and a celebrity intellectual, I imagine he was speaking for himself. Galbraith, however, wrote far fewer books than Terry Eagleton, and no doubt there will be more to come before Eagleton turns off his word processor and calls it a career. Evidently, Eagleton remains convinced that he has a lot more to teach us about a lot of things, especially language, literature, and culture and their nature and uses. I’ve never been disappointed in anything I’ve read by Eagleton, though The Idea of Culture seemed unduly cerebral and better suited to an audience that took itself more seriously than the readers of his other books, myself included.I expected How to Read Literature to have a lot in common with his earlier book Literary Theory. Evidently, however, literary theory and literary appreciation or, if you prefer, literary criticism, have less in common than I had imagined. Literary Theory, apparently, has more to do with the nature of language, and literary criticism emphasizes aesthetic criteria that govern how language is used in producing novels, short stories, poems, and other fictional forms. Theory and criticism, nevertheless, certainly have a substantial conceptual overlap.How to Read Literature, thus, may generate minor but annoying confusion as to the very nature of literature as a distinct creative activity. For example, in Literary Theory Eagleton made much of the once prevailing admonition that “a poem should not mean but be.” Since poems are constructed of words, and words take their meaning from their relationships with other words, and words are the building blocks of language and literature, the distinction between literary theory and literary criticism becomes even harder to make with confidence. However, if an author such as Eagleton chooses, in a particular instance, to emphasize one over the other, it seems reasonable to overlook the artificiality of a hard and fast break between the two, at least for the time being.How to Read Literature is, for the most part, readily accessible, and it’s not unduly difficult to follow Eagleton’s discussions of openings, character development, the variable nature of narratives, and other pertinent topics. Nevertheless, Eagleton does not pander to the reader by choosing only easy examples with which to make his presentation. If anything, he shows off just a bit, displaying his impressive erudition and demonstrating the depth and complexity of his thought, sometimes to the point of contrivance for just this purpose. In truth, Eagleton fairly often over-interprets literature of varied genres. This is the sort of complaint that is often heard from mystified Freshmen enrolled in their first course in English composition, but toward the end of the book Eagleton acknowledges that patterns of alliteration, clusters of sumptuous words, instances of well-timed understatement, and other happy locutions attributed to an author’s brilliance are very often produced unself-consciously. This does not rob them of their literary value, but it does undercut the claim that they were intentionally invoked to produce admirable literature. This, I think, has the salutary effect of making the writing of fiction seem less like industrial engineering and more like art.Furthermore, one need not agree with every judgment that Eagleton offers. Sometimes he seems to be simply wrong. This is conspicuously true of his analysis of what the takes to be misguided uses of empathy in understanding and explaining characters. If I understand him, Eagleton claims that empathy has no place in the production of fiction. His reasoning has an odd and, I think, demonstrably false basis, namely that if one is empathizing — putting yourself in the place of another person — by becoming that person you deny yourself the opportunity to observe him or her and gather material for use in your writing.This claim, however, seems absurdly wrong. George Herbert Mead’s masterful Mind, Self, and Society gives a conspicuous place to taking the role of the other, in other words to empathy, in the development of social and communicative competence. This is how we learn about each other and acquire the ability to interact,Much more recently, in Adam Begley’s biography Updike, the biographer very effectively describes John Updike as always maintaining an essential detachment from himself, enabling him to observe and record what he did and felt just as he was doing it. Updike was adept at empathizing with himself and thereby accumulating raw material for his writing. This, according to Begley, was a primary reason why so much of what Updike wrote is autobiographical.Even the smartest and most learned among us occasionally make some pretty consequential blunders. In this instance, I think that Eagleton became entangled in an overwrought convolution of his own making and outsmarted himself. It’s ironic, moreover, that Eagleton rejected empathy but endorsed the use of sympathy, thereby risking spilling over into sentimentality.This review is a lot more unfavorable than I wanted it to be. Eagleton’s discussions of classical realism, romanticism, and modernism are very informative and useful. His failure to give more attention to post-modernism is consistent with choices he’s made in some of his other books, such as After Theory. He pays tribute to post-modernism in the abstract, but seems averse to celebrating it concretely. In Why Marx Was Right he gives the distinct impression of being pretty much fed up with it. In fact, Eagleton goes so far as to judge modernism, not post-modernism, to be the most important development for literary and cultural studies in the 20th Century.Eagleton, whatever his errors in judgment and penchant for self-aggrandizement, alerts the reader to important aspects of literature that are often overlooked or discounted. He is indeed endorsing “slow reading,” and to do that as insightfully as Eagleton must be exhausting, something that is mastered over time through repeated applications.No, Eagleton never comes right out and says “here is a list of the attributes of all fine literature,” and he acknowledges that individual taste has a legitimate role in evaluating what we read and how much we enjoy it. More compelling, though, are his repeated acknowledgments that literary criticism unrelated to time and place is something that cannot be realized. That he puts so much emphasis on context, including social organization and relationships, as essential factors in evaluating literature is very much to his credit. Eagleton may be a bit of a showoff, but he’s also an extraordinarily capable writer who rarely lets his ego render his work inaccessible to unspecialized readers.

⭐Eagleton tries to redeem his utter failure in “Why Marx was Right” (*) by sprinkling highschool-level Marxist-type comments throughout “How to Read Literature” (**). That (*) was intellectually lazy to the point of comedy can be seen by using Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature. Realizing that the analytical portion of his mind didn’t develop along with the creative portion of his mind, Eagleton tries to make his case (subversively, mind you) in (**). Since Eagleton ignores the reality of Marxism (i.e., the absolute failure of Marxist ideas when used to direct gov’t/economic policy) and lives in a world of literature, I suggest he read (*) alongside Bertrand Russell’s “The Practice and Theory of Bulshevism”. Or perhaps read a newspaper to get a glimpse of Marxism as it’s “working” in Venezuela.Some gems from (**):From the preface: “I am, I suppose, best known as a literary theorist and political critic, and some readers might wonder what has become of these interests in this book. The answer is that one cannot raise political or theoretical questions about literary texts without a degree of sensitivity to their language”Translation: “I’ll be pursuing my political agenda here”p.12-13: “[Forster] was one of the most renowned liberal thinkers of his day, at a time when liberalism was in shorter supply than today…. [Forster] detested Winston Churchill, abominated all forms of nationalism…”Translation: “See? Forster thinks like me! Also, things are so horrible today! Damn Americans and their stupid capitalism. Things would be much better if smart people like myself would make policy. And no, I would not be just like Maduro or Lenin and yes, I can successfully apply Marxist ideas to an economy. What? No, it is not hypocrisy to mention Churchill, but not a single socialist leader that killed/starved millions of their own citizens”p.34-35: “…Jane Austen. For her, as for neo-classical authors in general… emotions are not my private property, as [a] more individualist society … might suppose. On the contrary, there is a sense in which I learn my emotional behavior by participating in a common culture. … Civility involves more than not spitting in the sherry decanter.”Translation: “See? See?! Even Austen thinks communism is the light and the way. Individualism is for cavemen and we shouldn’t try to improve our lives without first being told by an enlightened group (which includes myself – so don’t worry about abuse of power) how to live more fairly. What? You want to donate to charity X? Ok, that’s kinda nice but I think the money is best for charity Y and since I’m in charge….”p.35: “… Vladimir Lenin, who wrote a revolutionary tract entitled What is to be Done?”Translation: “Yes, and that’s all you need to know about Lenin so I need not say more… and I don’t. But more shots at Churchill to come! heee-heee”p.40: “He is also cultivated enough to use the word ‘catamite’, which is not often to be heard on Fox TV”Translation: “C’mon people, this one is obvious. Aren’t I clever? What? What do you mean that the 63% employment rate in America is the lowest in decades and five straight years of liberal economics has led to a jobless recovery? No, no, that’s a fox-fabrication!”p.42: “George Orwell’s 1984…”Translation: “Huh? No, there’s no connection between that book’s message and socialism, not at all. What? No, Maduro is doing none of those things, the newspapers/newsfeeds are lies! What? No, Animal Farm has nothing to do with socialism as it pertains to reality. It’s about revolution leading to tyranny because of abuse of power – nothing like that can come from application of Marxist principles”p.45: “To describe Lear as bullying, … to make him sound like some modern-day newspaper mogul.”Translation: “Duh – Murdoch, Fox, c’mon, stay with me people I’m being obnoxiously obvious here. And no, bullying is not more aptly applied to say Kim Jong-Un or Putin or Maduro, not at all. It is utterly honest, intellectual and appropriate to instead allude to Murdoch than some guy in North Korea who may not even have been involved in killing anyone (afterall, if the news came from Fox….)”I stopped at this point and am returning the book. If other books on the topic didn’t exist, then these little barbs would be tolerable. But they do, so they aren’t. The extra star is for the humor and insight I gleaned in the first 45 pages. This is going back to Amazon today (along with his “How to Read a Poem” book). Too bad.If you want an introductory book on interpreting literature that includes Eagleton’s flavor of politics, this book is for you. If you prefer to keep literature and politics separate (particularly socialist apologetics), look elsewhere.

⭐I haven’t had the chance to finish reading this book. I’m not sure why I’m being asked for a review this soon. But I’m on Chapter 3. I’ve learned some important things from this book, but the author often makes much ado about nothing…droning on about minutia. So I’m a little conflicted about this book. It’s given me some valuable information, but made the learning painstaking because some of the really great ideas are bogged down by the author’s seeming to try to show off cleverness that just becomes as tiring as an acquaintance who brags too much too often.

⭐Despite the title, it’s not really a “How-to” book. It’s just a list of all the things he’s read, and how wonderful he is for being so smart. I think the whole thing is kind of smarmy and self-congratulatory. Evidently I’m WRONG – as my prof and all the English majors I know think this guy’s amazing – but as a person who is not into literary criticism, I was hoping this would sort of make it easy for me and explain what to do step by step.As a book lover, I argue every point he makes in the book – I think you should love your books, I think you should love your characters. I think they are like special friends who never age and never go away, and yet you learn more about them each time you read a book over again. If you too love books, this book will make you sad. 🙁

⭐Do you want some actual theory on the components of a novel? Read the first and last couple of pages of each chapter. Everything in between is examples taken from literary texts that make sense only if you’ve really read every single one of them (there’s a lot of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and a lot of Moby Dick). In my opinion Eagleton wanted to showcase how many “important” books he’d read, more than actually teach you how to analyse literature. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but of course that’s not the point. I would say, buy only if you want a well-done analysis of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Moby Dick after you’ve read all their books. The content itself isn’t bad (though a bit repetitive), but it isn’t what it claims to be.

⭐An excellent read for those who enjoy literature – novels, plays and poetry. Eagleton’s opinions are very grounded and eclectic and are often expressed very amusingly. I shall be returning to some of my old favourites.

⭐A short introduction to the art of ‘slow-reading’. Prof. Eagleton’s wide reading and witty opinions will make analysing works of literature delightful. If I had a teacher like this in school, I might have taken a different career path! Especially recommended for non-native English speakers like me. I must go back to the classics I’ve read and to read the many more which this fascinating book touches upon.

⭐Dostoevsky is a better novelist than John Grisham in the sense that Tiger Woods is a better golfer than Lady Gaga’. The work is about how one arrives at the value judgements behind that rather nice donnish joke that is one of the delights in this volume. By discussing the use of language, plot and characterisation and finishing with some examples from his extremely wide reading, Eagleton approaches the answer to the title of this book. If the condensed version of the answer is ‘carefully and closely’, it is because the subject itself is as varied as its constituents, but along the way there is plenty to enlighten and to entertain. The style is easy, the asides are plentiful and amusing, the selections are wide-ranging. It’s a treat.

⭐This book is aimed at general readers. It provides an opinionated account of what makes literature work (or not) and avoids the complexity and insiders guff of more academic works by the same author. Although you should be reasonably ‘well-read’ you don’t have to have read all the classics to understand the points being made. Even if you don’t always agree with what is said, the light touch and a strong sense of humour makes it immensely enjoyable. My only whinge is that it is a bit short.

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