All mock tests are FREE till 31 December — register to save your progress
Unit 8 · Reading Comprehension English · December 2022 (Shift 2)

What does the claim that literature is 'a number of ways in which people relate themselves to writing' imply?

Pick an option to check yourself, or open the answer below.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. Literature has values that different subject-positions may interpret differently

Explanation

Value depends on how readers in different positions relate to a text.

Note: Passage II is from Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), which is copyrighted and not reproduced. Eagleton argues that 'literature' names a number of ways in which people relate themselves to writing, not a fixed set of texts with an 'essence'. Any text can be read 'non-pragmatically', and, as with John M. Ellis's 'weed', the word is a functional, not an ontological, term: it tells us what we do with a text, not what it permanently is.

More Reading Comprehension questions