At the beginning of the semester, we read “The Rise of English” by Terry Eagleton. In this essay we learn how literature replaced religion as the source of truth, values and ideals that nurtures the society and keep it stable during the 19^th century. It is a very interesting concept that I would like to discuss from the perspective of Marx and Gramsci’s theories. Literature is described as a positively influential phenomenon. Yet I would like to see literature from a darker perspective. Like religion, literature is an ideology used by the ruling class to keep the working class under control.

Religion, like many other disciplines, is an ideology (used by the clergy). But “literature, in the meaning of the word we have inherited, is an ideology” (Eagleton 44). To further expand this statement, literature expresses truths and values that plant deep in human unconsciousness. Yet, Marx and Engels definition of ideology can be used to describe literature. Marx and Engels described ideology as following: “If in all ideology men, and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura…” (Marx and Engels 656). In other words, ideology is a set of beliefs that are a distorted or inverted image of the real world. Ideologies do not represent the world as it is but represent it as certain individuals perceive it. Since ideologies are strongly held beliefs, they can be used to control the lives of people. Literature is an ideology, and thus, it can be used for this purpose as it represent. From a Marxist perspective, literature does not represent the real world; it just gives society a distorted representation of the world that allows the ruling class.

But an ideology does not manifest in the society by itself neither does literature. There are individuals who are in charge of applying ideologies. According to Antonio Gramsci, these individuals are called “intellectuals.” Intellectuals “must have the capacity to be an organiser of society in general…because of the need to create the conditions most favourable to the expansion of their own class” (Gramsci 1002). These individuals are members of the ruling class and they are in charge of establishing the ideology and creating the education system and job positions in a society for the benefit of their own class. Gramsci talks about traditional intellectual who come from preceding economic systems. One example of this traditional intellectuals is the clergy. They had a monopoly in society that comes from centuries of history.

However, the power of the clergy started to fail during the 19^th century. In his essay, Eagleton says that “immensely powerful ideological form,” religion, was no longer accepted by the hearts of the people due to political and social changes and literature was wining the hearts of people. It means that non-ecclesiastic intellectuals were using literature as the ideology that keeps the society in the hands of the ruling class since religion was failing to do so.  This intellectuals can be “organic,” which means they were created in the society’s current economic system, or they can be traditional intellectuals. But regardless of their origins, this intellectuals are writers whose creation, literature, is an ideological form that adapts to the changes of the society since the 19^th century. Therefore, it has given the working class a distorted perception of the world. It keeps then hoping of a promising future, and consequently, doing what the ruling class wants.