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