Abstract
This paper reviews the concept and the corpus of English literature and its development in the context of culture and the academy from the 18 th Century onwards. I argue that the category of literature is a ‘liquid’ notion best understood as a form of ‘social action’ (after Eagleton) relevant to wider social, cultural, and political contexts that produce and ‘consume’ it. In the academy, through extending the notion of the institution to a wider social and political context, literature could be best understood as an ‘institutional reality’ reflecting perceived relations of power. Deeming literature as an ideological tribute is crucially important to arguing against the monolithic and essentialist (Anglo-American literary tradition) as embodying a universal value that still prevail in post-colonial institutions. This argument helps conceptualise and interrogate the cultural constructs embodied in English literature, in general, and the English canonical texts, in particular; it also makes it possible to refute the claim that literature transcends its local boundaries and nationalist sentiments to articulate the universal concerns and values of all people. In my approach to these claims and assumptions, I resort to a critical narrative review to the 'story' of the English literature in cultural, political, social, geographical and institutional contexts.. In academy, particularly in post-colonial settings, I conclude that the adopted literary tradition reflects a matrix of relations of power and institutional affiliations. Such conceptualisation of literature helps to challenge the claim that English literature largely embodies a humanistic enterprise of universal values and uniform human experience.
Highlights
Prior to developing an understanding of the category of literature, it might be helpful to tackle the concepts of ‘institution’ and ‘society’ and their relation to literature
The paradigm shift from literary study to cultural study occurs through considering the context of the text, in a way that examines the social, cultural, and political manifestations of the literary text. This shift has been intensified through the emergence of a new class of radical criticism, such as feminism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and post-colonialism, that scrutinise the role of the text in social representation
Said (1993), for example, suggests that “[w]ithout empire, I would go so far as saying, there is no European novel as we know it, and if we study the impulses giving rise to it, we shall see the far from accidental convergence between the patterns of narrative authority constitutive of the novel on the one hand, and, on the other, a complex ideological configuration underlying the tendency to imperialism” (p. 69-70)
Summary
Prior to developing an understanding of the category of literature, it might be helpful to tackle the concepts of ‘institution’ and ‘society’ and their relation to literature. The idea of literature as a form of ‘social action’ (Eagleton, 1996) might be understood as an antithesis to the modernist view of ‘art-for-art’s sake’ that takes literature to transcend its local boundaries and nationalist sentiments to articulate the universal concerns and values of all people This idea began in the era of progressive modernism, it is originated with a call to free artists whose aesthetic visions should neither comply with the formal rules of academic art, nor seek social approval (Chin, 2006). ‘Institutionalising’ literature has epitomised the concept and determined its value, and how it mirrors wider cultural relations of power Drawing on these observations, I argue that there always exists interplay between the text and the wider context responsible for producing and disseminating literature, which intersects with institutionally established ideologies and practices. Bauman’s (2000, 2001) ‘liquid’ or ‘liquidity’ provides an outstanding metaphor for understanding the volatility of the concept of literature, and how it is shaped by the social and historic vessels that nurture it, in academic settings
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