Any Attempt To Define Literary Theory In

Ideology... Is A Kind Of Contemporary Mythology, A Realm Which Has Purged Itself Of Ambiguity And Alternative Possibility.

A Socialist Is Just Someone Who Is Unable To Get Over His Or Her Astonishment That Most People Who Have Lived And Died Have Spent Lives Of Wretched, Fruitless, Unremitting Toil.

The New Testament Is A Brutal Destroyer Of Human Illusions. If You Follow Jesus And Don't End Up Dead, It Appears You Have Some Explaining To Do. The Stark Signifier Of The Human Condition Is One Who Spoke Up For Love And Justice And Was Done To Death For His Pains. The Traumatic Truth Of Human History Is A Mutilated Body.

The British Are Supposed To Be Particularly Averse To Intellectuals, A Prejudice Closely Bound Up With Their Dislike Of Foreigners. Indeed, One Important Source Of This Anglo-saxon Distaste For Highbrows And Eggheads Was The French Revolution, Which Was Seen As An Attempt To Reconstruct Society On The Basis Of Abstract Rational Principles.

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.