How to Read Literature

by Terry Eagleton

Overview

A literary master’s entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasure​

What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature is the book of choice for students new to the study of literature and for all other readers interested in deepening their understanding and enriching their reading experience.

In a series of brilliant analyses, Eagleton shows how to read with due attention to tone, rhythm, texture, syntax, allusion, ambiguity, and other formal aspects of literary works. He also examines broader questions of character, plot, narrative, the creative imagination, the meaning of fictionality, and the tension between what works of literature say and what they show. Unfailingly authoritative and cheerfully opinionated, the author provides useful commentaries on classicism, Romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism along with spellbinding insights into a huge range of authors, from Shakespeare and J. K. Rowling to Jane Austen and Samuel Beckett.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300247640
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	09/24/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	488,081
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of Literature, University of Lancaster, UK, and Excellence in English Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Notre Dame. One of the most influential literary critics in the English-speaking world, he is the author of more than 40 books on literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion, among them his best-selling Literary Theory: An Introduction. He lives in Northern Ireland, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1 Openings 1

2 Character 45

3 Narrative 80

4 Interpretation 117

5 Value 175

Index 207

Editorial Reviews

"Part of the fun of the book is the way in which Eagleton prompts, provokes and at times infuriates. How to read How to Read Literature? . . . as an ideal introductory guide to critical analysis, and a thoroughly enjoyable reminder of Eagleton’s own skill and subtlety as a reader."—Felicity James, Times Higher Education Supplement

"A pleasingly readable overview of what we talk about when we talk about books. . . . Incisive and honest."—Michael Washburn, Boston Globe

"How to Read Literature is a lively and engaging primer on basic strategies for appreciating literature, a kind of English 101 in a book."—Washington Post

"This is Eagleton at his most charming and an excellent guide for literature students early in their education or those seeking a refresher course."—Publishers Weekly

"A genial guide to exactly what the title promises. . . This short book benefits from a conversational, even humorous tone. . . Includes a very funny exegesis of 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' and an interpretive linkage of Dickens and Harry Potter."—Kirkus Reviews

"This is not only an entertaining book, it's an important one. What Eagleton refers to as "slow reading", after Nietzsche, seems horribly endangered as a human activity. He draws us back to basics here, in a sequence of sharp analyses, taking into account the essential aspects of intelligent reading. I love his breezy style, so accessible and concrete; yet he never sacrifices nuance or subtlety. This is a book for every reader, not only beginners, yet it will prove immensely useful in the classroom."—Jay Parini, author of Why Poetry Matters

From the Publisher

Notable and polarizing English critic Eagleton provides basic instruction on close reading and literary criticism for beginners. He discusses the opening sentences of some famous works and explains how they establish tone, employ irony, or create dramatic effect. On Characterization, Eagleton explores some of Dickens's "freakish figures", Shakespeare's Othello as "a character without a context", and brings himself to task on a "woefully off the mark" early reading of Sue Bridehead in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction) explains different types of narrators, and the ways in which authors may reveal bias or "rig their narratives to suit their fictional purposes." He shows the process of literary interpretation in action, first with a silly analysis of "Baa Baa Black Sheep", and then more seriously delving into the themes, symbolism, and imagery of Dickens's Great Expectations. Crucially, he breaks down differences between Realism and Modernism in terms of creating characters, handling conflict, and dealing with the limitations of a narrative. He points to Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy as a subversion of Realism and an example of Modernism before its time. This is Eagleton at his most charming and an excellent guide for literature students early in their education or those seeking a refresher course. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"How to Read Literature is a lively and engaging primer on basic strategies for appreciating literature, a kind of English 101 in a book."—Washington Post

Washington Post

"A pleasingly readable overview of what we talk about when we talk about books. . . . Incisive and honest."—Michael Washburn, Boston Globe

Boston Globe - Michael Washburn

“Part of the fun of the book is the way in which Eagleton prompts, provokes and at times infuriates. How to read How to Read Literature?...as an ideal introductory guide to critical analysis, and a thoroughly enjoyable reminder of Eagleton’s own skill and subtlety as a reader.”—Felicity James, Times Higher Education Supplement

Times Higher Education Supplement - Felicity James

Renowned UK critic and best-selling author Eagleton (Literary Theory: An Introduction and After Theory) is at it again. Here he attempts to teach new students to read with greater insight. In-depth but rambling analyses consider how concepts such as character, narrative, and originality came to be valued differently by various literary movements. His close reading of randomly selected "first lines" is adept but inconclusive, and takes time that could have been spent on such concrete literary elements as theme and syntax. Despite a long-winded defense of his own bad interpretation of "Baa Baa Black Sheep," his witty and erudite prose does reveal brilliant insights about an array of texts. VERDICT While Eagleton is obviously well read, with an unquestionable knowledge of literary theory, this book may not achieve its ambitions. Unsurprisingly, students will not actually learn to read literature from this volume but over time might further develop their interest in great books by careful perusal of the cited works.—Lara Jacobs, Brooklyn

Library Journal

A genial guide to exactly what the title promises, for readers who aren't particularly experienced or critical. Though he enjoys renown in Britain as a literature professor, Eagleton (Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America, 2013, etc.) maintains from the outset that this is "a guide for beginners." As such, it might confuse those beginners who are new to Wuthering Heights, Jude the Obscure or much of Dickens, since at least a cursory knowledge of the novels he is using to make his points would seem helpful in understanding those points. Yet this short book benefits from a conversational, even humorous tone and rarely requires much in the way of literary or critical theory as a prerequisite for its discussion of issues that most readers will recognize: Characters are not real people, and they have no existence outside the novel. Literature can generate multiple meanings, without agreement on the "right" one. A consideration of the language employed is crucial, for literature is nothing more (and nothing less) than its words. Initial chapters on "Openings" and "Characters" seem to hopscotch all over the place, since literature here encompasses poems, plays and novels (with a span of centuries and continents), in whatever order the author chooses to juxtapose. Chapters on "Narrative" and "Interpretation" are meatier and more focused. In the former, Eagleton reminds readers that "there is rarely any simple relation between authors and their works," while illuminating a range of strategies that include the omniscient and unreliable narrators. The latter includes a very funny exegesis of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and an interpretive linkage of Dickens and Harry Potter. As for the concluding "Value," it is the most provocative and least convincing of the lot, dismissing Updike as "artful but lifeless" while praising the "superlative literary art" of Carol Shields. Perfect for an intro course that features some of the literature the book discusses.

Kirkus Reviews