Practice question · Multiple choice
Eagleton argues literature is a functional rather than an ontological category. What follows from that claim?
Hints
- Ontological means "about what a thing IS"; functional means "about what is done with it".
- If the category is functional, the same text can move in and out of it.
Show the answer
C. Whether a text counts as literature depends on how a culture treats it, not on a property inside it
Why
It means the boundary is drawn by use, not by a feature you could detect in the text. The same words — a folk song, a chronicle, a philosopher's dialogue — can be treated as literature in one period and not in another, and nothing inside them changes. This is why the definitional question keeps failing and why the historical question keeps working.
Practise Literary Study Among the Disciplines
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Literature I is free to start.
More questions on Literary Study Among the Disciplines
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