Essay Questions

How does religion converge with social class?

Eagleton describes, “Religion, moreover, is capable of operating at every social level: if there is a doctrinal inflection of it for the intellectual elite, there is also a pietistic brand of it for the masses. It provides excellent social ‘cement’, encompassing pious peasant, enlightened middle-class liberal and theological intellectual in a single organization. Its ideological power lies in its capacity to ‘materialize’ beliefs as practices: religion is the sharing of the chalice and the blessing of the harvest, not just abstract argument about consubstantiation or hyperdulia.” Individuals in divergent social ranks are unified through religion. Ideologies upheld by religion are expected to be endorsed by the adherents regardless of their ranking in the society. Religion does not disseminate different values to various social classes; hence, it minimizes the variances among conventional classes.

Why is literature a categorical illusion?

Eagleton elucidates, “It is an illusion first in the sense that literary theory, as I hope to have shown, is really no more than a branch of social ideologies, utterly without any unity or identity which would adequately distinguish it from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cultural and sociological thought; and secondly in the sense that the one hope it has of distinguishing itself-clinging to an object named literature-is misplaced.” The allegorical illusion underscores that literature does not have a precise person which would be differentiate from other fields outlined above. Citing literary theories is tantamount to assessing a literary work based on the angle of the fields that are not overtly related to literature. Accordingly, literary theories are not real for they borrow from other conceptions.