Was Paul M's Eagleton tidbit on THE UNCONSCIOUS

[Paul Mackin]

On 10/18/2012 9:50 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:
> Recently read an article (Guardian? BBC?) suggesting all creativity is 
> proximate to mental illness. The argument was poorly structured and 
> unrevealing, ultimately claiming that the most creative people, the 
> creative genii, generate their work either resultant of direct efforts 
> to manage illness or to deal with proximate illness in others in a 
> manageable context. (My summary, of course, and unreliable.) It didn't 
> seem to me news enough to pay much attention to. Artists are crazy? No 
> shit? Gee, who'd a-thunk it? It's a thin line between madness and 
> genius? Wow.
>
> The Freud / (Jung) / Burke / Jameson link seems much more profitable. 
> What is Eagleton's title? I'd like to read it. He occasionally rings 
> true, if difficult.
>
> Burke's pentad often proves useful.

The Eagleton book is The Event of Literature.  The chapter I was 
discussing is entitled Stategy, which according to Eagleton comes from 
Burke, who saw  human communication as a form of action. Dramatism.

On Mark's comments, for me the sure sign of real literature is 
originality.  The presentation of non conventional values is ipso facto 
originality.   Values can be expressed in a million ways. Where does 
this expression come from--from the writer's unconscious.  More 
generally from all that is hidden from normal view. Nothing is new under 
the sun.  But much is hidden.

P


>
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net 
> <mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
>     On 10/17/2012 4:09 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>     Can't find the email but if I remember, Paul said that Terry
>>     Eagleton
>>     has written that it may be THE UNCONSCIOUS that is the creativeness
>>     that unites writers. Been thinkin' on that.
>
>     Actually I kind of misrepresented the great Terry E and left out
>     his final point.
>
>     The unconscious was a first stab at tying things together. It
>     works well for psychoanalytic theory of course, also political
>     theory (meaning Marxist), structuralism, post structuralism, and
>     semiotics.
>
>     However he next goes on to develop sort of a theory of everything
>     and comes to the conclusion that in ALL literary work, in a
>     certain sense, the text doesn't merely represent proper action,
>     but also that action is perfectly realized because the reality to
>     which it is faithful is no other than the one it creates itself.
>
>     The above depends on the idea of textuality--writers don't go to
>     work on raw reality but rather on the always already textualized.
>     Very French although the authors he relies on are Kenneth Burke
>     and Frederic Jameson.
>
>     The route to his conclusion involves a style of thinking some
>     people might not find persuasive.  But it's all very interesting.
>
>
>     P
>
>
>>     While I read a good esssay on Kenneth Burke since he was mentioned
>>     (by Monte and Wayne Booth, I believe). Burke seemed to believe that
>>     all great writers (in recent centuries anyway) can be seen as
>>     articulating
>>     values somehow---almost by definition---different from the
>>     prevailing, largely tacit, structural
>>      values of a society. That is their necessary tension (or else
>>     they are just PR-like journalists).
>>     this summary is obviously mine, fyi.
>>     Anyway, Burke's pattern-finding leads one--me--to thoughts of the
>>     countervailing
>>     symbols in TRP, from W.A.S.T.E/Trystero to CounterForce, etc...
>>     and how with a tight but wide understanding of 'the
>>     prevailing ideas of a society'
>>     almost any tension and insight might have to come from an
>>     Unconsciousness outside of
>>     it. And, to loop TRP back in, we know he has some
>>     Freudian-Jungian notions about history
>>     and the societies that make that history.
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all 
> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the 
> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments 
> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates 
> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant

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