Terry Eagleton Quotes
The British are supposed to be particularly averse to intellectuals, a prejudice closely bound up with their dislike of foreigners. Indeed, one important source of this Anglo-Saxon distaste for highbrows and eggheads was the French revolution, which was seen as an attempt to reconstruct society on the basis of abstract rational principles.
Eagleton, Terry. The Function of Criticism. Verso, 1984, p. 32.
Commenting on a bill to reduce government strictures on homosexuality:
He goes on to observe that the German’s are the most hated of the Europeans in large part because they mainly trade in rotgut liquor much of it poisoned which has a devastating effect on the Africans. (The English, in contrast had to have all alcohol inspected in London for safety, before it could leave for Africa.) The “kings” to which the Bishop referred are the rural tribal kings of whom there were more than a few. It is not as if there were a unified monarchy. Another interesting observation is that although Turner was one of Americas leading Blacks, he used the term frequently, but never capitalized it.
There has always been in America a subpopulation which has distrusted intellectuals and educated people. The bias against intellectuals and well educated people ebbs and flows but it is always present. In this 1920 quotation the suspicion was there as today but did not have the name calling that tended to accompany this bias in the latter part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Some of the bias is in reaction to a snobbishness that has been exhibited by some intellectuals, but the bias against intellectuals is generally strongest amongst the least educated groups in America. The South in particular has tended to have the weakest educational systems and institutions, and the vast majority of intellectuals were against the Southern racism and discrimination that used to prevail so extensively, and the vestige of anti intellectualism is still there despite the fact that the gap between Southern education and institutions is nowhere near as large as it used to be. Religious fundamentalists also are generally more distrustful of intellectuals as even where the intellectuals are religious they tend to be modernists and not fundamentalists. And of course, liberal and conservative intellectuals constantly accuse the other group of dominating the intellectual agenda.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Terence Francis Eagleton FBA (born 1943) is a British literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University.
