Literary Theory Quotes

On this page you will find all the quotes on the topic "Literary Theory". There are currently 19 quotes in our collection about Literary Theory. Discover the TOP 10 sayings about Literary Theory!
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  • In my profession more generally, it's not an exaggeration to say that masculinity is viewed as the root of all evil. If you were to take a literary theory course, you might think it would be about literature, but it's really not. It's about all the various forms of oppression on earth and how we can see them playing out in literary works. And behind all these forms of oppression is a guy.

    "A Talk With The Savage English Professor". Interview with Sam Harris, www.thedailybeast.com. March 5, 2015.
  • The ambition of much of today's literary theory seems to be to find ways to read literature without imagination.

    Charles Simic (2013). “The Monster Loves His Labyrinth”, p.63, Copper Canyon Press
  • As for me, my literary theory, like my politics, is based chiefly upon one main idea, to wit, the idea of freedom. I am, in brief, a libertarian of the most extreme variety, and know of no human right that is one-tenth as valuable as the simple right to utter what seems (at the moment) to be the truth

    H. L. Mencken (2000). “H.L. Mencken's Smart Set Criticism”, p.24, Regnery Publishing
  • Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.

  • You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.

    "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.
  • What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism .

    Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.79, John Wiley & Sons
  • If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.

    Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.21, John Wiley & Sons
  • Any attempt to define literary theory in terms of a distinctive method is doomed to failure.

    Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.172, John Wiley & Sons
  • He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts 'but to experience certain emotions and to be put in a certain disposition.' Hence his famous literary theory that tragedy effected a purification (katharsis) of the emotions of terror and pity that amounted to an experience of rebirth.

  • It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.

    "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.
  • First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.

  • Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another.

  • After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

    "Why Marx Was Right". Book by Terry Eagleton, 2011.
  • I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

  • Literary theories will not make a writer write.

  • I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller.

    Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.10, John Wiley & Sons
  • Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind.

    Gore Vidal (1991). “A view from the diners club: essays 1987-1991”
  • I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

    Reading   Book   School  
  • I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to "truthiness." I am also someone who has been trained in deconstruction in the literary theory department of Yale University, so I am someone who is tempted to believe that no absolute truth is possible.

    Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. October 21, 2008.
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