Terry Eagleton How To Read Literature Summary

In Terry’s Eagleton’s book, “How to Read Literature,” Eagleton divided his book into five different chapters titled: “Openings,” “Character,” “Narrative,” “Interpretations,” and “Value.” Throughout the book, Eagleton mentioned many famous authors and many well-known books. Not only does he mentioned them, he often quoted them to give examples on how readers should analyze the words and the message of the work itself.

In the first chapter of his book, “Openings,” Eagleton started off by allowing the readers to picture students having a conversation about a book. Very quickly he pointed out the flaw in the discussion because he believed that, “some of the points made are fairly perceptive.” To read literature well or correctly, Eagleton believes

that you must look out for the “techniques” in how they say anything. The first few pages of the chapter were roughly round how important it is to notice the way the author of the book say things the way they said it. As the chapter continued, Eagleton ranted about how students and even long time readers have this bad habit of taking the books too literally. He quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and explain how even the words of the work asks you to go back to reality. Although he mentioned many different things, the chapter showed how first sentence slightly is very important to allow the reader to be drawn into the book. By hyping or mentioning whatever the actual image the author will create for the reader, in other words, to draw them in without giving everything away. From then on, Eagleton’s approach throughout the book and this chapter stayed the same, he quotes or mentions a certain part of a book and reveal the actual meaning of it and allow the reader to see how you should analyze it.