Eagleton exposed different ways of
seeing what literature could be; but, he also gave arguments that showed that
those different ways of seeing what literature is could be wrong or at least
mistaken. This could be mainly because sometimes it is hard to tell whether a
text is literature or not; and actually, despite it is very hard to distinguish
when a text is literature or not, the real difficulty is not to say if a text
is literature, because the real difficulty is not to tell whether it is
literature or nor, but to know why it is literature or why not. Eagleton gave
to the reader some examples in which sometimes different perspectives of seen
what literature is works perfectly, but others in which those definitions do
not work. And finally, Eagleton do not show a clear definition of what
literature is, because there is not such definition.
There are different examples that
are given to the reader have both strengths and weaknesses. And there is one
that specially caught my attention which summed means that anything you think
is literature is literature. This sets the definition to something very simple
and very subjective. But, that also means that if two people have different
opinions of whether a text is literature or not there would be like a shock.
However, I actually found this definition very interesting because we could
vary it a little and say that literature is what most people think is
literature. And actually I think that is the way it had worked for a while. Obviously,
it is not a perfect definition, but it is an idea that came to my mind and actually
it caught my attention.
Eagleton, T. (1996). What
is literature?. In Literary Theory
(pp. 1-14). Oxford: Blackwell publishing.
