“Statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgements: that those statements are worth making, perhaps more worth making than certain others, that I am the sort of person entitled to make them and perhaps able to guarantee their truth, that you are the kind of person worth making them to, that something useful is accomplished by making them, and so on.” FactsTruthPowerValueJudgements Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“All of our descriptive statements move within an often invisible network of value-categories, and indeed without such categories we would have nothing to say to each other at all. It is not just as though we have something called factual knowledge which may then be distorted by particular interests and judgements, although this is certainly possible; it is also that without particular interests we would have no knowledge at all, because we would not see the point of bothering to get to know anything. Interests are constitutive of our knowledge, not merely prejudices which imperil it. The claim that knowledge should be 'value-free' is itself a value-judgement.” FactsKnowledgePowerValue Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller.” KnowsWellsFactsSchoolKnownStudySubjectsTheoryAcademicWell KnownIntroductionDelightedIntriguedSellersOutragedBest SellersBusiness SchoolLiterary Theory Book:Literary Theory: An Introduction Source: Literary Theory: An Introduction
“[F]or the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey.” PeopleFactsPoliticalGamesSpeakChanceFootballSeriousChiefsSoccerThese DaysExecutivesCracksIconsCocaineOpiumConformistBolsheviksBeckhamPolitical ChangeChief ExecutivesShirk Author:Terry Eagleton
“The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.” WayPlayFactsLiteratureCommonMistakeNovelStudentsAccountsSettingSettingsSoilErosionNebraskaIncidenceSoil Erosion Book:How to Read Literature Source: How to Read Literature
“With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.” CharacterFactsHomeHappensLiteratureLanguageStuffTermDealsFictionNarrativePlot Author:Terry Eagleton
