Eagleton, Terry - How to Read Literature

H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e

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capture the immediacy of human experience, or allow us a glimpse
of absolute truth? If it is to do so, it must be thickened and dislo-
cated, made more intricate and allusive; and this is one reason why
some modernist works are so hard to decipher. Language in its
everyday state is shop- soiled and inauthentic, and only by doing
violence to it can it become supple enough to reflect our experi-
ence. It is from this period that we inherit the high- sounding
clichés that reflect so many twentieth- century attitudes to language:
‘there’s a breakdown of communication’, ‘words are just so inade-
quate’, ‘silence is so much more eloquent than speech’, ‘if I could
tell you I would let you know’. In modern cinema, not least in
France, phrases like these are spoken by two people in bed staring
soulfully into each other’s eyes, punctuated by unbearably long
silences.

* * *

We can now turn to some of the interpretative issues I raised at
the start of the book. Let us take the following well- known
literary text:

Baa baa black sheep,

Have you any wool?

Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full.

One for the master

And one for the dame,

And one for the little boy

Who lives down the lane.