The Rise of English

Essay | Terry Eagleton
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Brief Question of "The Rise of English"

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Brief Question of "The Rise of English"

  • What kind of writing is The Rise of English?
Ans: An essay, the first chapter after the introduction in Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983).
  • What did “literature” mean in the 18th century?
Ans: All valued writing—philosophy, history, essays, letters, and poems—meeting “polite letters” standards.
  • What writing was not counted as literature then?
Ans: Street ballads, popular romances, and drama.
  • What did 18th-century didactic literature include?
Ans: Periodicals, coffee-house talk, treatises, sermons, translations, and moral guidebooks.
  • When did literature in the modern sense emerge?
Ans: Around the 19th century, in the Romantic period.
  • What is A Defence of Poetry?
Ans: Shelley’s 1821 essay defending poetry’s role in society and imagination in industrial culture.
  • What did poetry mean in the Romantic period?
Ans: Human creativity opposed to utilitarian industrial capitalism.
  • What is An Apology for Poetry?
Ans: Sidney’s 1579–80 essay praising poetry’s antiquity and moral power above philosophy and history.
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  • What kind of society did the Romantics live in?
Ans: One valuing imagination over reality, and poetry over prose.
  • How was England a police state then?
Ans: By repressing opposition while fearing revolution abroad.
  • What did “poetry” imply in the Romantic period?
Ans: Social, political, and philosophical meaning—not just verse technique.
  • How was the Romantic artist’s life?
Ans: Marginal in society, unpaid for truth-telling work.
  • What is the improbability of art and artefact?
Ans: Ancient Greeks didn’t see the Iliad as “art” like we see modern works.
  • What was the effect of aesthetics?
Ans: It hid historical differences in art and artefacts.
  • How does the symbol become a panacea?
Ans: It unites conflicts between subject and object, mind and matter.
  • What was religion’s state by the mid-Victorian period?
Ans: Weakened by science and social change.
  • What worried the Victorian ruling class?
Ans: Religion’s decline, as it was a strong tool of control.
  • How does religion work? 
Ans: Through images, rituals, and myths, not just doctrines.
  • Who commented on England’s sickness?
Ans: George Gordon, Oxford Professor of English literature.
  • What triple function did Gordon see for literature?
Ans: To delight, instruct, and save souls—healing the state.
  • How can literature inspire decent living?
Ans: By showing eternal truths and beauty, lifting people’s views beyond daily struggles.
  • What should be literature’s motive, according to Eagleton?
Ans: To nurture tolerance and generosity, supporting social stability.
  • What were the purposes of cheap liberal education?
Ans: Social unity, sympathy, national pride, and moral values.
  • How does Eagleton view Scrutiny?
Ans: A journal and cultural crusade that boosted English studies after WWI.
  • How did Scrutiny reshape English literature?
Ans: Judged all fields by literature, revising its scope from Chaucer to Emily Brontë.
  • What is Eagleton’s sarcastic remark on Scrutiny’s “organic society”?
Ans: An unreachable dream of reviving a golden past.
  • How does Eagleton define “essential Englishness”?
Ans: Middle-class patriotism blended with folk tradition, not upper-class snobbery.
  • How does Eagleton criticise Eliot’s view on Tradition?
Ans: Eliot’s “Tradition” idea is mostly arbitrary.
  • What is Eagleton’s comment on Eliot’s “Fisher King”?
Ans: Powerful images of rebirth, offering unity beneath capitalism’s surface.
  • What is practical criticism?
Ans: Applying art principles and theory to evaluate specific works.
  • When did New Criticism evolve?
Ans: In post–WWI North America, aiming to make criticism a professional discipline.
  • What is Eagleton’s view of New Criticism?
Ans: It was irrational, tied to religious dogma and right-wing politics.
  • What kind of critic is Eagleton?
Ans: A major Marxist critic, linking literature to history and society.
  • What is the theme of The Rise of English?
Ans: The growth of English literature under British imperial rule.
  • What does “neoclassical” mean?
Ans: 18th-century art/literature style based on ancient Greece and Rome.
  • What is the essay The Rise of English about?
Ans: The development of English literature since the 18th century.
  • Why did English literature gain power?
Ans: Largely due to wartime nationalism.
  • How did Eagleton see English after WWI?
Ans: As a moral and spiritual tool for social reform.
  • What is great literature’s nature?
Ans: Created by great minds, letting readers access their inner lives.
  • What is New Criticism?
Ans: A mid-20th-century approach treating works as self-contained art objects.
  • How does Eagleton define creative imagination?
Ans: Spiritual and intuitive labour opposes rationalist ideologies. 
  • What is Eagleton’s view of organic societies?
Ans: Myths used to criticise industrial life.
  • What is Marxist literary criticism?
Ans: A historical approach linking literature to class and economics.
  • What was Scrutiny?
Ans: A literary journal (1932–1953) led by L.C. Knights and F.R. Leavis.
  • Mention one theme of The Rise of English.
Ans: English literature’s growth under British imperialism.

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Terry Eagleton
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from The Rise of English