Response Paper on "Introduction : What is Literature?" by Terry Eagleton

In his reflections on "Introduction : What is Literature?" ,Terry Eagleton aims to find out the discreteness of literature as an independent discourse, trying to highlight some of its characteristic features on the basis of which ,a piece of writing is included in or secluded from the ‘literary premises’. An armature in literary studies in bound to feel a ‘Eureka moment’ ,with every idea that he presents as Terry takes his readers on a literary exploration. He traces the’ Literariness’ of the works from Beauwulf to the contemporary writings , evaluating them on the basis of their factual or frictional quality, bringing his reader to his first broader conclusion with  Roman Jacobson’s definition ;" piece of literature is an 'organized violence committed on ordinary speech'". This idea is substantiated by Formalistic views of literature, which takes into consideration the structure of language rather than the content of the piece. This leads to a further idea that the “estrangement” produced by  the ‘deformed’  ordinary speech is a characteric quality of literature. But  considering the fact that“a person’s norm can be another person’s deviation” points toward the cultural relativity which literature possess, dismissing the former argument. Terry explores how the cultural relativity is further fuelled by a larger population’s private interests, conceived by their unconscious prejudices and the ideological basis of these prejudices . Here he presents varied examples to substantiate his argument, which seem somewhat irrelevant , deviating reader's attention to more minute details making him/her sway from the greater objective of the arguement; his rigor towards the subject is appreciated here but the overemphasis has made it monotonous towards the end. Nevertheless ,Terry manages satisfy his readers by putting upfront , how literature cannot be defined within a set of inherent qualities, proving the common hypothesis wrong. Not only this, the sociological dimension which he gives to the category of what falls under literature ,is appreciable and has provided multiple dimentions to the subjectivity of literature.

The mention of the study conducted by the Cambridge critic I. A. Richards, which sought to demonstrate just how whimsical and subjective literary value-judgments could actually be, particularly interest me. The study included giving the undergraduates a set of poems, withholding from them the titles and authors' names, and asking them to evaluate them. The resulting judgments, notoriously, were highly variable: time-honored poets were marked down and obscure authors celebrated. Terry’s remarks on how tight a consensus of unconscious valuations underlies these particular differences of opinion, I think is worthy of discussion. The habits of perception and interpretation, which they spontaneously share -what they expect literature to be, what assumptions they bring to a poem and what fulfillments they anticipate they will derive from it ; these ideas are indicative of the fact that our family, background and culture has got a major role to play in formulation of our literary interests . Taking an Indian perspective into consideration, one can find that the traditional forms of epic poetry and its verses, which had a taken a backseat a few decades ago, due to rampant westernization , is now made sense of. Indians are shedding their pride in colonial literary forms, reverting back to Indian traditions of story-telling. A fine example of this slow  and gradual change would be more and more colleges including translated colloquial texts in their syllabus to help children connect with their roots.

The  journey, which Eagleton takes his reader on, pauses with an an eye opening revealation that literature cannot be defined having specific set of qualities, and thus is subjective in nature. But it simply dose'nt deal with its subjectivity, as one seems to term it subjective, destroying the categorical value which literature has achieved over years . The underlining factors shaping the value- judgment of a particular text are, the broader ,ideological value-laden interests ,which formulate an unconscious ,private interest of an individual and these interests determine the way a  literary text is percieved by its readers.l .

Michele Mendelssohn's essay on "Reconsidering Race, Language and Identity in "The Emperor Jones"" attempts to revise and question the commonly used interpretative techniques like German expressionism, Jungian Psychology, racial memory etc to analyze O’Neill’s one of the major works, “The Emperor Jones”.  Michele carefully dissects the play exposing  the multiple layers of meanings, which O’Neill constructs by his witty interplay of themes like race, language and identity.

 The essay  has heavily borrowed its references from the works of  Franz Fanon, Bhabha and other scholars, providing factual support to Michele's arguement.Through Fanon's racially-defined psychoanalytic theory , she makes her primary point sugessting why and how Jones shares a common racial history and also throws light upon the psychoexistential complex created by the juxtaposition of black and white races. In further talking about the role of race in shaping language and identity, the play's mistaken analysis of the one dealing with the question of race, is corrected by Fanon; "The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, in jungle" .Further by internalising the  language of the colonizer, Jones had become intellectually colonised.Thus by saying “…mastery of language affords remarkable power”, Fanon justifies Jones establishing himself as the Emperor , which Smithers fails to accomplish. This argument holds much value in context like a pre-colonial India where Vernacular languages  were encouraged among British officers and administrators. One can fathom the obvious reasons behind doing so. Jones bilingualism forces him to bear a double burden under which his sense of self crumbles, which is termed as "Manichean delirium" by Fanon . Michele makes this argument to project a post -colonial individual , who embodies both colonizer and the colonized. Jones takes up a “negroid” form, whom Fanon calls a “ white man’s artifice inscribed on a black man’s body”. Jones atavistic experience is treated in a different light where he faces a rapproachment between terms. Jones emphasizes rationality, being antithetical to irrational “heathen” natives. But later uses “nigger”, a term reserved for Other, while telling himself “Cheah up, nigger, de worst is yet to come!” With these lines the contrast starts fading here. Both Michele and Fanon seem to convince their readers with this final argument where Fanon makes the readers aware of the shortcomings of Jung’s theory, explaining how Jones genetically share collective unconscious of a black man while culturally assimilating the collective unconscious of a white man’s fear and hatred of blackness.

The original play “ The Emperor Jones” was in set in early 20^th C, in the wake of the upcoming Civil Rights Movement. The black community had suffered a painful racial past of slavery, impugn, violence, hatred and  segregation for more than two centuries which , with Civil Rights Movement , saw a future to itself.  Racism thus forms the core theme of the play and language and identity development of the characters is branched from the same. The essay successfully demolishes the idea that black and white are separable. It captures the deeper connotations of the play ,exploring these inseparable, painfully permeable boundaries between black and white.As the great philosopher Neitzche propounds in his book "Beyond Good and Evil", discrete polarities cease to exist; good and bad, black and white, truth and lie are all relative. It’s the “grey” which remains.