1 - 2 Eagleton, Plato & Aristotle Cheat Sheet

Eagleton points to a perspe­ctival shift from literature conferring a “greatness and [...] noble spirit” on the reader (Arnold 1869) to it being a powerful tool of social control of the middle and working classes in the Victorian Era (Eagleton 1983).

Marxist commen­tator on literary theory:
• Extends concept of ideology to literature
• Asserts that literature does not reflect but actively produces ideology
• Thereby, the study of literature is political

The growth of the study of literature coincides with “the failure of religion” in the Victorian Era due to the “twin impacts” of:
• Scientific discovery: daguer­rotype (1840s), germ theory of disease (1850s), Darwin
• Social change: Factory Act, Pubic Health Acts, Education Act, Married Women’s Property Act, Matrim­onial

- Used by the ruling class to control the masses through ideology, that is, less by specific rules and more by ritual and mythology
- Religion is affective (mood, feeling, attitude) and experi­ential (based on one’s experi­ences) → irrational hence hard to break

Provides “timeless truths” to sweeten the pill of the social situation:
– Pride in nation: language and culture
– Reverence for achiev­ements
– Sense of position within society
– An escape – by virtual experience – into another place or life
This can be seen more explicitly in who it was designed for:
– “working men’s colleges”
– women who sought to become school teachers
– army men during the colonial period

Socrates → Plato → Aristotle
• No known works of Socrates
• It is assumed that Plato took many ideas from Socrates
• Socrates is a key figure in in Republ­ic/­mou­thpiece of Plato
• Plato founded the Academy in 387 BCE, an instit­ution devoted to research and instru­ction in philosophy and the sciences (mathe­matics and logic) for the “philo­sop­her­-ru­ler­s/p­hil­oso­pher- kings/­gua­rdians” of society
• Aristotle was Plato’s pupil at the Academy and eventually became a teacher himself

Philos­ophy:
Rational – based on higher faculty of the
mind: Reason and Law
Communal, Adult, Moral
Permits men to rise above the self and focus attention on the steady, calm, unshakable faculties of the mind
The Arts:
Irrational – based on lower faculty
of the mind: Pleasure and Pain
Selfishly Indulgent, Childish, Perverse
Distracts men with emotion, prestige, wealth, political power,
­and art itself

User > Knowledge
Maker > Belief
Repres­enter > Neither

“Repre­sen­tation is natural to human beings from childhood. They differ from the other animals in this: man tends most towards repres­ent­ation and learns his first lessons through repres­ent­ation.”

“Also everyone delights in repres­ent­ations [...]. The cause of this is that learning is most pleasant [...] they delight in seeing images, because it comes about that they learn as they observe, and infer what each thing is, e.g. that this person [repre­sents] that one” (90).

Catego­riz­ation and Logical differ­ent­iation:
- Invented the scientific method of analysis
- Codified the divisions of knowledge into discip­lines and sub-di­sci­plines: physics, chemistry, biology, psycho­logy, etc.
- Departs from Plato’s transc­end­ental philosophy to instead be more pragmatic (less emotional and more logica­l—and sees the value in emotion)
Poetics:
- Inaugural system of literary criticism and theory: genre, structure, form, etc.
- Six salient points of tragedy: plot, character, reasoning, diction, song, spectacle

1. Plot: complete, whole action which has some magnitude
- Beginning, middle, end
- Reversal of position (Perip­eteia)
- Recogn­ition of fate (Anagn­orisis)
2. Character: reveals decision, of whatever sort
3. Reasoning: being able to say what is possible and approp­riate, what is or is not
4. Diction
5. Song
6. Spectacle: enthra­lling but artless (and unnece­ssary)