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Marxism and Literary Criticism (Chapters 1-2)

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Marxism and Literary Criticism (Chapters 1-2) 550 ADRIENNE RICH complex, more than Shakespeare because we know more about the lives of women—Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf included. Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are TERRY EAGLETON real, and have real sources, everywhere in the environment, built into society, language, the structures of thought. They will go on being tapped and explored by poets, among others. We can neither deny them, nor will we rest there. A new generation of women poets is already working out of the psychic energy released when women begin to move out towards what the feminist philosopher Mary Daly has Marxism and Literary described as the "new space" on the boundaries of patriarchy.8 Women are speaking to and of women in these poems, out of a newly released courage to name, to love each other, to share risk and grief and cele- Criticism (Chapters 1-2) bration. To the eye of a feminist, the work of Western male poets now writ- ing reveals a deep, fatalistic pessimism as to the possibilities of change, 1976 whether societal or personal, along with a familiar and threadbare use of women (and nature) as redemptive on the one hand, threatening In the preface to his book, Eagleton writes ironically: "No aoubt we on the other; and a new tide of phallocentric sadism and overt woman- shall soon see Marxist criticism comfortably wedged between Freudian hating which matches the sexual brutality of recent films. "Political" and mythological approaches to literature, as yet one more stimulating poetry by men remains stranded amid the struggles for power among academic 'approach,' one more well-tilled field of inquiry for students male groups; in condemning U.S. imperialism or the Chilean junta to tramp." He, urges against such an attitude, believing it "dangerous" the poet can claim to speak for the oppressed while remaining, as male, to the centrality of Marxism as an agent of social change. Despite his part of a system of sexual oppression. The enemy is always outside warning, however, and because of his claims for the significance of the self, the struggle somewhere else. The mood of isolation, self-pity, Marxist criticism, Eagleton's opening chapters, dealing with tuo topics and self-imitation that pervades "nonpolitical" poetry suggests that a central to literary criticism, are here presented for some thoughtful profound change in masculine consciousness will have to precede any "tramping." new male poetic—or other—inspiration. The creative energy of patri- "Marxism," which in some quarters remains a pejorative term, is in archy is fast running out; what remains is its self-generating e n e r g y for fact an indispensable concern in modern intellectual history. De- destruction. As women, we have our work cut out for us. veloped primarily as a way of examining historical, economic, and social issues, Marxist doctrine does not deal explicitly with theories of » Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Towards a Philosophy of Women's Libera- literature; consequently, there is no one orthodox Marxist school (as tion (Boston: Beacon, 1973). there is an orthodox Freudianism), but rather a diversity of Marxist readings. Eagleton's own discussion partly illustrates this diversity: he uses the familiar derogatory term "vulgar Marxism" to refe- to the simplistic deterministic notion that a literary work is nothing more than the direct product of its socio-economic base. Aware also of how Marxist theory can be perverted, Eagleton in another chapter 's scorn- " ful of such politically motivated corruptions as the Stalinist doctrine From Marxism and Literary Criticism; © 1976 by Terry Eagleton. Used by per- mission of the University of California Press. 551 552 TERRY EAGLETON MARXISM AND LITERARY CRITICISM 553 of "socialist realism," an extension of statist propaganda that has had ings of Karl Marx, himself the youthful author of lyric poetry, a frag- chilling effects upon art and artists. ment of verse-drama and an unfinished comic novel much influenced Like many sophisticated Marxist critics, Eagleton stresses the com- by Laurence Sterne, are laced with literary concepts and allusions; he plicated interrelationships between the socio-economic base and the wrote a sizeable unpublished manuscript on art and religion, and institutions and values (including literature) which comprise the super- planned a journal of dramatic criticism, a full-length study of Balzac structure. But precisely because those relationships are so complex, a and a treatise on aesthetics. Art and literature were part of the very wide variety of critical thought has been brought to bear upon them. air Marx breathed, as a formidably cultured German intellectual in Thus, Eagleton takes as his starting point an analysis of how various the great classical tradition of his society. His acquaintance with lit- Marxist critics have addressed themselves to particular questions of erature, from Sophocles to the Spanish novel, Lucretius to pstboiling literary analysis; subsequent chapters of his book, for example, explore English fiction, was staggering in its scope; the German workers' circle the role that the writer plays in advancing the cause of the proletariat he founded in Brussels devoted an evening a week to discussing the and the extent to which literature is a commodity, as much the product arts, and Marx himself was an inveterate theatre-goer, declamer of of economic activity as the automobile. poetry, devourer of every species of literary art from Augustm prose Other problems central to Marxist critical discussions include ques- to industrial ballads. He described his own works in a letter to Engels tions such as: What is the relationship between literature and ideology? as forming an 'artistic whole', and was scrupulously sensitive to ques- How does literature develop out of the life of a society? Are there tions of literary style, not least his own; his very first pieces of j o u r n a l - formal laws of literature which serve to distance it from the forms of ism argued for freedom of artistic expression. Moreover, the pressure the material world? Is the primary function of criticism to describe, of aesthetic concepts can be detected behind some of the mos: crucial to explain, to interpret, or to evaluate? To what extent is language categories of economic thought he employs in his mature work separable from society, and is ideology separable from language? To Even so, Marx and Engels had rather more important tasks on their what extent has Marxism, itself a body of theory, been influenced by hands than the formulation of $ complete aesthetic theory. Their com- other modern intellectual currents such as psychoanalysis, existential- ments on art and literature are scattered and fragmentary, jlancing ism, structuralism, and semiotics? Far from being the monolithic allusions rather than developed positions. This is one reason why dogma its detractors suggest, Marxism is a living body of thought, Marxist criticism involves more than merely re-stating cases se out by seeking to answer questions such as these, which are often ignored in the founders of Marxism. I t also involves more than what has become other approaches to literature. known in the West as the 'sociology of literature'. The sociology of literature concerns itself chiefly with what might be called the nieans of literary production, distribution a n d exchange in a particular society— how books are published, the social composition of their authors and audiences, levels of literacy, the social determinants of 'taste'. It also 1: Literature and history examines literary texts for their 'sociological' relevance, raidingliterary works to abstract from them themes of interest to the social historian. There has been some excellent work in this field, and it forms one aspect of Marxist criticism as a whole; but taken by itself it is neither Marx, Engels and Criticism particularly Marxist nor particularly c r i t i c a l . It is, indeed, for tie most part a suitably tamed, degutted version of Marxist criticism, appropri- 'IF KARL MARX and Frederick Engels are better known for their political ate for Western consumption. and economic rather than literary writings, this is not in the least be- Marxist criticism is not merely a 'sociology of literature', coicerned cause they regarded literature as insignificant. It is true, as Leon with how novels get published and whether they mention the vorking Trotsky remarked in Literature and Revolution (1924), that 'there are class. Its aim is to explain the literary work more fully; and this means many people in this world who think as revolutionists and feel as a sensitive attention to its forms, styles and meanings. But it alsc means philistines'; but Marx and Engels were not of this number. The writ- grasping those forms, styles and meanings as the products of a par- 554 TERRY EAGLETON MARXISM AND LITERARY CRITICISM 555 ticular history. The painter Henri Matisse once remarked that all art bears the imprint of its historical epoch, but that great art is that in The social relations between men, in other words, are bound up with which this imprint is most deeply marked. Most students of literature the way they produce their material life. Certain 'productive forces'— are taught otherwise: the greatest art is that which timelessly transcends say, the organisation of labour in the middle ages—involve the social its historical conditions. Marxist criticism has much to say on this relations of villein to lord we know as feudalism. At a later stage, the issue, but the 'historical' analysis of literature did not of course begin development of new modes of productive organisation is based on a with Marxism. Many thinkers before Marx had tried to account for changed set of social relations—this time between the capitalist class literary works in terms of the history which produced them; and one who owns those means of production, and the proletarian class whose of these, the German idealist philosopher G.W.F.
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