A Review of Teddy Eagleton's essay, "What is Literature?"

Terry Eagleton’s essay “What is Literature” consists more of what literature is not or can not be than what it actually is. He talks about the various definitions of literature which already exist and then goes on to contradict these definitions, thus proving that literature is far from something tangible or definitive. So how do you define something which has no boundary?

Eagleton attempts to help us understand by using interesting and relatable examples throughout his essay. The part which I liked the most in the essay was when he talks about the common understanding that literature is anything “non-pragmatic”.

He says that poems, stories, plays can be written by the the writers “non-pragmatically” but that does not mean the readers will always take them as they’re cooked up to be. What he means by this is that a lot of times, the work of a writer may be taken more seriously than it was intended, or maybe read for some other reason than entertainment. People don’t just gain knowledge and information from science books or the usual academically relevant textbooks. Novels, poetry, plays and other texts carry a lot of information too and these texts can a lot of times be read simply to gain more insight about the particular time it was written in or maybe some aspect of it which might be relevant for knowledge, general as it may or may not be. However, the writer could have just written it for entertainment purposes.

Take Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. While reading the series, I also got to know a lot about Greek mythology. I actually know people who have read the series not because they like fiction or supernatural books but because they are into Greek mythology and wanted to learn more about it. So this way, if we start considering literature as a type of writing which is “non-pragmatic”, we might as well stop considering the Percy Jackson series as fiction because a lot of readers have turned to it for purely pragmatic reasons, that is, to gain more insight into Greek mythology and Greek Gods. But obviously, just because the way different readers regard the text differently, it does not cease to be literature. That would be ludicrous. So in a similar way, it is also very much possible that a piece of writing which was initially meant to simply provide information turns out to be literature.

“Some texts are born literary, some achieve literariness, and some have literariness thrust upon them”

This way, Eagleton manages to debunk the belief that literature is something “non pragmatic”. Instead, he mentions that literature can be anything and everything a reader makes it out to be. The power then lies not in the hands of who creates the text but the ones who read it. According to him, it is not possible to just assign specific, inherent features to literature and call it a day. Nope, it is way more complex than that.

Eagleton then mentions John M. Ellis’s comparison of literature as “weed”. No, not the kind you think but the annoying, non-specific weed which seems to grow everywhere and is just impossible to get rid of, in general. You can’t pinpoint it to a specific plant (no, I’m serious. Weed is NOT a specific plant) and it is very unwanted, usually. Eagleton makes sense of this statement by saying that perhaps literature is the same but in the opposite way. It can come from anywhere and everywhere (much like weed) but it is taken to be different things because it is valued so highly by the readers.

All in all, this section of the essay mainly revolves around how literature can not be seen within the defined boundaries of practical and on-practical. It is way too vague to be just given a simple label like that. Instead, it is much like the weed. A functional term rather than plainly an ontological term.

The rest of the essay was good to read but I found this section to be the most informative, interesting and straight forward.

To read the full essay, check out the link http://www.dartmouth.edu/~engl5vr/Eagle1.html

A Psychological Approach to The Emperor Jones

The Emperor Jones tells the story of an autocratic black emperor who mistreats and robs his subjects. He’s confident that even after treating them like slaves and continually deceiving them, he can easily escape when they decide to revolt against the ruthless emperor.

The play begins with him foolishly telling a conniving English trader called Smithers about his plans and flaunting his fearlessness regarding the angry subjects. He’s confident that nothing can get him, until something does…

In Michele Mendelssohn’s analysis of the play, she considers a lot of aspects and major themes of the play, mainly race, language and identity. However, the part which I found the most interesting was the concept of “unheimlich” being applied to the play’s protagonist and the theory of Self by Carl Jung and how it explains Jones’s downfall.

To a non-psychology student, The Emperor Jones is probably just a paranormal play with a little thrill and horror here and there, but for psychology students, the only major genre this play can belong to is the genre of psychological thrillers...or maybe that’s just me because I love psychological thrillers, be it books like “Tell Me Your Dreams” by Sidney Sheldon or movies like “Lucy” and “Limitless”. The mind is a beautiful place which can make reality quite ugly for you at times.

Something similar happens to Brutus Jones whose past catches up with him when he continues to ignore it and seeks to forge a completely new identity for himself. He represses his insecurities and fears and ultimately ends up doing the same things to his subjects what was done to him when he was a slave.

Mendelssohn brings this to light in her paper by explaining the concept of “das Unheimliche” and connecting it with the “collective consciousness” of Jones as an African-American. The sense of being “unhomed” or “unheimlich” and lacking a sense of rootedness creates a feeling of isolation. Not being able to belong anywhere creates identity issues within one’s self. Jones ran away from his previous life as a slave and completely changed himself when he took over as a ruler. He cloaked himself with the identity of a white man and started treating his subjects much like he was treated as a slave. His persistent denial to see himself being of the same origin as the people he ruled over and repressing his insecurities into the deep, dark depths of his unconscious mind ultimately leads to him having visions of his ancestors and later himself till he is forced to acknowledge his past as well as his ancestor’s past. In the end, what he was beneath all the fancy, western clothing and the metaphorical cloak could no longer remain hidden because that was his real identity. He himself uprooted this identity and suppressed everything about his real home only to be left with nothing and nobody.

The sense of “otherness” is also mentioned in Mendelssohn’s analysis. This comes from the Jungian archetype of Self which signifies the unification of the conscious and the unconscious in a person. This didn’t happen with Brutus as he struggled to get rid of his identity as an African-American. His rejection of being a black man and favouring white values and ruling tactics disassociated his consciousness from his unconsciousness. Ultimately, he was neither African nor American, leaving him once again, homeless and without any solid identity.

Thus, the concepts of Self, collective consciousness, unheimlich and identity crisis are very well applied by Mendelssohn in her paper and aptly describe the odd behaviour and hypocritical stance by Brutus Jones in the play. His complicated identity seems to make a lot more sense when viewed through the lens of psychology and thus, makes it fun to analyse and ponder upon.