Today, English departments are in crisis. Enrollments are plummeting. Administrators shut down "useless" humanities majors. Eagleton’s essay explains why: The university no longer needs a "spiritual substitute." The market is the new religion. STEM and business degrees produce workers; English produces critics. A system does not want to be criticized.
Eagleton dismisses the idea that "English" was always there. In the 18th century, literature meant polite letters —a tool for the aristocracy to distinguish themselves from the rising merchant class. It was about taste, not truth.
The Mechanics' Institutes and evening colleges were among the first to teach English literature to the working class. The goal was to "civilize" the poor. By teaching them to appreciate the "grandeur" of Shakespeare or Milton, the ruling class hoped to distract workers from miserable factory conditions and low wages. Educating the Empire
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Ultimately, their radical zeal for literature ended up serving the status quo. By focusing entirely on internal aesthetic harmony and moral sensibility through "close reading," they severed literature from historical reality and active political struggle. 5. Why Eagleton’s Critique Matters Today
To understand how literature became a suitable candidate for this ideological role, Eagleton traces the shifting definition of “literature” itself.
The Rise of English: How Literature Became the New Religion In his seminal 1983 book Literary Theory: An Introduction , British critic Terry Eagleton dedicated a pivotal chapter titled "The Rise of English" to a radical idea. He argued that the study of English literature did not emerge out of a pure love for art. Instead, it developed as a calculated tool for social control, nationalism, and moral conditioning during the Victorian era. Today, English departments are in crisis
: The essay is widely praised for its wit, accessibility, and "trenchant and perceptive criticism". It is a foundational text for students learning to see literature through the lens of ideology .
Eagleton’s analysis does not stop with the Victorian period. He goes on to critique the twentieth-century inheritors of this Arnoldian project.
However, Eagleton argues that this move was itself deeply ideological. By focusing so minutely on the text itself as a discrete aesthetic object, Leavis and his followers effectively isolated literature from its messy historical, political, and biographical contexts. The project of "Scrutiny"—the journal Leavis edited—was, in Eagleton's view, "hair-raisingly radical and really rather absurd," seeking not to change society but to withstand it by forming an elite, cultured minority that could protect the precious "organic" values of a vanished past. Eagleton’s essay explains why: The university no longer
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Eagleton begins his analysis in the 19th century, a period when traditional Christian faith was rapidly declining due to the growth of science and industrial capitalism. The Crisis of the Ruling Class
Despite being written decades ago, Eagleton’s analysis of "The Rise of English" remains highly relevant. It encourages readers to question: What makes a text "literature"? Who decides what is included in the canon? How does education shape our view of culture and power? Conclusion
Literature was taught to the working class to provide them with a "civilizing" education that would prevent political radicalization.