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Quotes from Literary Theory: An Introduction — Terry Eagleton

born 1943 England

← All quotes by Terry Eagleton

18 quotes

Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

The truth is that liberal humanism is at once largely ineffectual, and the best ideology of the 'human' that present bourgeois society can muster.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

It is language which speaks in literature, in all its swarming 'polysemic' plurality, not the author himself.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

If the masses are not thrown a few novels, they may react by throwing up a few barricades.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

If we were not called upon to work in order to survive, we might simply lie around all day doing nothing.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Language always pre-exists us: it is always already 'in place', waiting to assign us our places within it.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

All consciousness is consciousness of something: in thinking I am aware that my thought is 'pointing towards' some object.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Literary texts do not exist on bookshelves: they are processes of signification materialized only in the practice of reading. For literature to happen, the reader is quite as vital as the author.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

The present is only understandable through the past, with which it forms a living continuity; and the past is always grasped from our own partial viewpoint within the present.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Writing seems to rob me of my being: it is a second hand mode of communication, a pallid, mechanical transcript of speech, and so always at one remove from my consciousness.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

We live in a society which on the one hand pressurizes us into the pursuit of instant gratification, and the other hand imposes on whole sectors of the population and endless deferment of fulfillment.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur "Thou still unravished bride of quietness," then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Terry Eagleton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.