What are Literature and English? (Eagleton Intro, C1)

1. How can literature be defined?

- as "imaginative writing"
- as fiction, rather than fact?
- as a special use of language (poetic, formalism)
- distinct from normal or ordinary (non-standard)
- context, genre cues
- estrangement, or non-pagmatic

2. What does Eagleton mean by claiming that "There is no 'essence' of literature whatsoever" (8) and that "the term 'literature' operates rather like the word 'weed'" (8)

- significance of their being no objective category of literature, illusion of 'fine-ness' as a category

3. How does Eagleton define "ideology" and how does this relate to literature? (13)

4.With the "Rise of English," what counted as literature and what uses did it serve? For whom? 

5.What changes does Romanticism bring to ideas about literature? How do changes in society and industrialization give new/redefined purpose to poetry in particular? (17)

6. What views did Matthew Arnold hold regarding the social uses of literature?   (21)

7. What changes are taking place in the university in the early 1900s?  What values do the critics associated with "Scrutiney" bring?

8. How does Eagleton's description of the practices of Practial/New Criticism deepen your ideas of the methods? And how do the 'methods' reflect the values out of which they emerge? (37-)