A Reflection on Eagleton & Nelms 

 

     I love when a text brings to mind a question so simplisitc and yet vague as "what is literature", because it is impossible to define fully, yet I can think of so many possible anwers on how to answer it. Just like the distinction between facts and fiction, it makes me think of how one can actually define a fact. Its kind of baffeling to be honest, when thinking of a history text vs. the Bible, in regards to the fictatios events within them that can never be validated to be incorrect. It makes me think of our ideologies and values as a society and what we hold to be correct and just. It is in a way, completely up to human interpretation for choosing what is right and that is a crazy outlook when you think if it. 

 

     To me, the subject of English is not just about regurgitation of Shakeseare and defining terms. To me English is so much more. Just as teaching itself has no limits in how much it pushes a student in ther education. Though a teacher does have guidelines to follow within their given syllabus, the amount their student learns and absorbs has no limits. English is a subject that has so many different concepts that must be explored. Furthermore English in my eyes is not just about study and practice, it is about each students independent experience with the subject and bettering them as a human being through insight into their personal lives and economic status. 

 

      According to Nelms, there is  an ever increasing numbers of alienated students within the classroom and he states, “the roots of their alienation lay at least partly in the structure of schools, including the approach toward language and literature that had become institutionalized in the English curriculum” (Nelms 54). This is somehing that really resonated with me because I felt this exact way growing up while watching how my bestfriend acted within the classroom. Nelms states that “students will learn to read and write better if they are reading and writing to inquire about issues that genuinely concern them”(Nelms 54), and this was something my bestfirend never experienced. She was a gifted student yet, she found no interest within the curriculum. I was always so flustered with her,  if the work didn't interest or display issues that she cared for she never attempted the work and would fail. Being where I am now, in the Con. Ed. program, I can really see why our education has to make world issues, and social idological events apart of our curriculum. It stimulates the studetnts to work harder when working with texts. I completely agree with Nelms in the adaptation of lesson plans being combined with these inquiries so that our students will produce more reflected upon and intellectual work that they actually care for.

 

     Eagleton's view that literature is a mode “consists of a highly complex range of discourses, differentiated according to class, region, gender, statues and so on, which can by no means be neatly unified into a single homogeneous linguistic community” (4). This concept of literature further pushes me to believe in how literature cannot be easily defined or characterized. I firmly agree with Eagletons idea that literatures definition is left  "up to how somebody decides to read, not to the nature of what is written” (Eagleton 7), because the experience of reading something for the first time is similar to the effects of the sublime.  Reading a text is a singular experience that is different for each person . We make intertextual relations, sense of the texts plot, and come up with our own emotions solely within our own experience of the text. All of which are, "differentiated according to class, region, gender, statues and so on, which can by no means be neatly unified into a single homogeneous linguistic community” ( Eagleton 4).

 

  Therefore, for myself, I beleive that ones education is all about the experience and well rounding of an individual human being. Though it can be seen to be difficult to make each students educational life so personal, I believe that it is a necessary goal for present and future educators to do so. 

 

 

Eagleton, T. (1985). ‘What is Literature?’ (Introduction to Literary Theory) pp. 1-14.

 

Nelms, B. F. (2000). Reconstructing English: From the 1890s to the 1990s and        Beyond. English Journal 89(3), 49 – 59.