The Hidden History of Your Degree: Decoding Terry Eagleton’s "The Rise of English"
I’ve been revisiting Terry Eagleton’s "The Rise of English" from his seminal work, Literary Theory: An Introduction
So what happened? Eagleton argues that as the bourgeoisie (the middle class) rose to power, they became afraid of rhetoric. A populace trained in persuasion is a populace that might persuade itself to revolt. So they replaced it with something far safer: an aesthetic, contemplative study of "literature." You stop learning how to argue for a new law, and start learning how to admire the symmetry of a sonnet.