Eagleton, "The Rise of English" and "Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory"

"The rise of English in England ran parallel to the gradual, grudging admission of women to the institutions of higher education; and since English was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feelings rather than the more virile topics of bona fide academic 'disciplines', ot seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science and the professions" (Eagleton 24). Click here!

Help! Muddy point!

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2009/01/speaking_of_muddy_points.html

"Literature was not a matter of ‘felt experience’, ‘personal response’ or ‘imaginative uniqueness’: such terms, indissociable for us today from the whole idea of the ‘literary’, would not have counted for much with Henry Fielding.”
-From Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction, Chapter 1 “The Rise of English,” page 15-16
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2009/02/letters_novels_or_blogs-what_r.html

Please help me understand the phenomena!!

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/BethanyMerryman/2009/02/phenomenahuh.html

Misleading, Misinforming, Misguiding: The Flip Side of Literature
"Literature would rehearse the masses in the habits of pluralistic thought and feeling, persuading them to acknowledge that more than one viewpoint than theirs existed—namely, that of their masters. I would communicate to them the moral riches of bourgeois civilization, impress upon them a reverence for middle-class achievements, and, since reading is an essentially solitary, contemplative activity, curb in them any disruptive tendency to collective political action. It would give them a pride in their nation language and literature…"(Eagleton 22).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2009/02/misleading_misinforming_misgui.html

Literature to the Rescue!

“Literature was in several ways a suitable candidate for this ideological enterprise. As a liberal, ‘humanizing’ pursuit, it could provide a potent antidote to political bigotry and ideological extremism. Since literature, as we know, deals in universal human values rather than in such historical trivia…it could serve to place in cosmic perspective the petty demands of working people for decent living conditions or greater control over their own lives” (Eagleton 22).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JennaMiller/2009/02/literature-to-the-rescue.html

"The whole point of 'creative' writing was that it was gloriously useless, an 'end in itself' loftily removed from any sordid social purpose" (Eagleton 18).

"For Fish, reading is not a matter of discovering what the text means, but a process of experiencing what it does to you."

I hate it! and you need to agree. It is not Literature?
"Literature was not a matter of ‘felt experience’, ‘personal response’ or ‘imaginative uniqueness’:”

"Fierce rearguard actions were fought by both ancient Universities against this distressingly dilettante subject: the definition of an academic subject was what could be examined, and since English was no more than idle gossip about literary taste it was difficult to know how to make it unpleasant enough to qualify it as a proper academic pursuit" (Eagleton 29).

Sweetened by the sugar of literature.

"The modern sense of the word 'literature' only really gets under way in the nineteenth cenutry. Literature in this sense of the word is an historically recent phenomenon: it was invented sometime around the turn of the eighteenth century, and would have been thought strange by Chaucer or even Pope," (Eagleton 16).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/BethanyBouchard/2009/02/alert_the_pope.html

"Literature was not a matter of ‘felt experience’, ‘personal response’ or ‘imaginative uniqueness’"
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/CoreyStruss/2009/02/what_is_literature.html