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It is easy to see why a diversity of cultures should confront power with a problem. If culture is about plurality, power is about unity. How can it sell itself simultaneously to a whole range of life forms without being fatally diluted?

Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 22
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Theorist
Non-Fiction Writer
Researcher
University Teacher
Writer
Salford
Greater Manchester
Whole
Diversity
Plurality
Life
Forms
Simultaneously
Culture
Confront
Easy
Cultures
Form
Sell
Power
Range
Problem
Sells
Fatally
Without
Unity
Diluted

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It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.
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Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.
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Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
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Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.
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Most students of literature can pick apart a metaphor or spot an ethnic stereotype, but not many of them can say things like: 'The poem's sardonic tone is curiously at odds with its plodding syntax.
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In the end, the humanities can only be defended by stressing how indispensable they are and this means insisting on their vital role in the whole business of academic learning, rather than protesting that, like some poor relation, they don't cost much to be housed.
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