Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“On handing the book back to my friend, the woman inquired "Is he gay?" No, said my friend. The woman pondered for… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism.” — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“That one can understand The Waste Land without even trying is consoling news for all students of literature.” — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
I attacked Dawkins's book on God because I think he is theologically illiterate. — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“A poem is a fictional, verbally inventive moral statement in which it is the author, rather than the printer or word processor,… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“It is said that an eighteenth-century bishop who read Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels threw the book into the fire, indignantly declaring… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“It was possible to explore the 'great tradition' of the English novel and believe that in doing so you were addressing questions… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“Even in the act of fleeing modern ideologies, however, literary theory reveals its often unconscious complicity with them, betraying its elitism, sexism… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What it means to be a ‘better person’, then, must be concrete and practical — that is to say, concerned with people’s political situations… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
“What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share
