In Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory, the author  astutely points out that readers are never objective. In fact, Eagleton conveys that our understanding of a particular literary text is controlled by how we as individuals perceive the world, suggesting our subjectivity and partiality. Eagleton further advocates that individual perception of reality is not as spontaneous as it would first appear - this too is embedded within a complex structure of beliefs and opinions, (i.e. ideology). Eagleton argues that our seemingly subjective opinions are actually molded by social ideologies, though most of the time we are unconscious of the fact.

Eagleton argues that the way we interact with and comprehend the world at large is deeply intrinsic to our readings of literature; our very conceptions of society and its workings, in effect, control our interpretations of fiction. For example, a Feminist largely views the world as ingrained with gender polarities. To the feminist, women appear to be marginalized by society and she will take this understanding of the world to the literary texts that she reads. She will always be acutely aware of the depiction of and stereotypes surrounding the female characters in a book.

The author also provides the reader with the diverse literary theories that have been developed to bridge the gap in understanding between the reader and the text. These theories focus on features of the text which are deemed as crucial in furthering the reader’s comprehension of its meaning. Modern literary theory is a fairly recent phenomenon originating in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Between then and the present day, there have been many speculations developed with regard to how one approaches a fictional text, be it a poem, a novel, or any other literary text. Following an introduction on ”What is Literature?“ and a historical analysis of the academic field of English, the theories are introduced one by one; Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory, Structuralism and Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, and Psychoanalysis.

The theory of Phenomenology was first advocated by Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher. He identifies phenomenology as referring to the science of human consciousness; it was a theory preoccupied with the ”deep structures” of the mind. The human being was perceived as the source and centrality of all meaning; the world existed because the human existed.

Phenomenological criticism perceives the literary text as a complete reflection of the author’s consciousness. Such a critic focuses on the text as revealing insight into the structural make-up of the author’s mind. Eagleton explains the concept of phenomenology as advocated by Husserl, Heidegger and others, and then highlights its “problem-areas” with their respective theories on phenomenology.

Structuralism assigns importance to the language of a piece of writing, rather than to its content. Language is a system of signs which need to be deciphered in order to realize their true meaning. The chapter on ‘Structuralism and Semiotics’ overflows with technical terminology and linguistic theory which, at times, can be difficult for the reader to absorb. As with the previous chapter, the major propagators of this theory such as Saussure and Bakhtin are detailed together with an analysis of Structuralism and its limitations.

The theories of Post-Structuralism and Psychoanalysis are the most fascinating. Post-structuralist criticism seeks to deconstruct literary texts and to absolve them of any coherent meaning. Language becomes metaphorical and thus any meaning, which can be extracted from a certain text, becomes ambiguous and directionless.

This prompts one obvious concern - if every piece of discourse is to be deconstructed, if ultimately there is no meaning to be grasped, then this begs the question of why would anyone write in the first instance since critics would labour at annihilating any meaning the writer had intended to convey? Psychoanalytical Criticism attempts to discover and understand any hidden or implicit meaning in a work of literature instead of focusing on its obvious and central meaning. The psychoanalytical critic delves deep into the ”unconscious” of the text, that is, the subtext which ironically conveys more significant meaning than the main text itself. The major drawback of such a theory however, is its complete rejection of literal meaning; what is of paramount concern is implicit, covert meaning, but this is not applicable to every text. It may be that the literal meaning is the only meaning to be understood.

Eagleton ends with a radical theory of his own - namely, that all literary theory is political and ideological. The theorists behind each literary approach, perhaps unconsciously and unintentionally, are propagating their social ideologies, that is, their ways of perceiving the external world. Eagleton rightly highlights the problem with the concept of ”Literature”, its arbitrary use and thus incoherence. He encourages the reader and the literary student to question the objectivity of literary theory, and to think for themselves about what constitutes a literary text and what guarantees its position in the literary canon. This book is definitely worth reading, either to further one’s knowledge of the theories that have governed the intellectual elite over the past two centuries, or more specifically to understand the way in which these theories affect literary response.