Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton (born in Salford, Lancashire (now Greater Manchester), England, on February 22, 1943) is a British literary critic and philosopher.

Eagleton obtained his PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge and then became a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Having spent some years at Oxford at Wadham College, Linacre College and St. Catherine's College, he is currently Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester.

Eagleton was the student of the Marxist literary critic Raymond Williams. He began his career studying the literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. Then he switched to Marxist literary theory in the vein of Williams. More recently Eagleton has integrated cultural studies with more traditional literary theory. He was, during the 1960s, involved in the left-wing Catholic group Slant and authored a number of theological articles as well as a book Towards a New Left Theology. His most recent publications have suggested a renewed interest in theological themes. Another significant theoretical influence on Eagleton is psychoanalysis and he has been an important advocate of the work of Slavoj Žižek in the United Kingdom.

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983, rev 1996), probably his best-known work, traces history of the contemporary study of text, from the Romantics of the 19th century to the postmodernists of the last few decades. Eagleton's thought remains firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition, and he has written critically on more recent modes of thought such as deconstruction. As his memoir The Gatekeeper demonstrates, Eagleton's Marxism is far from being a solely theoretical interest. He was active in Marxist organisations (notably the International Socialists - forerunner to the Socialist Workers Party - and then Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League) whilst in Oxford. He continues to provide commentary on political events in publications such as the New Statesman, Red Pepper and The Guardian.

After Theory (2003), indicts current cultural and literary theory, and what Eagleton sees as the bastardization of both. However, he does not conclude that the interdisciplinary study of literature and culture is theoretically without merit; in fact, Eagleton argues that such a merging is effective at addressing a wide range of significant topics. His indictment centers on theorists' and postmodernity's rejection of absolutes. He concludes that an absolute does exist: Every person lives in a body that cannot be owned because nothing was done to acquire it and nothing (besides suicide) can be done to be rid of the body. Our bodies and their subsequent deaths are now an absolute around which humankind can focus its actions. Terry Eagleton has also completed a trilogy of works on Irish culture.

[edit] Publications

The Body as Language : outline of a new left theology (1970)
Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)
Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (1981)
Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983/1996)
The Function of Criticism (1984)
Saint Oscar (a play about Oscar Wilde)
Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives (editor) Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.
The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990)
Ideology: An Introduction (1991)
The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996)
"Heathcliff and the Great Hunger" (1996)
"Crazy John and the Bishop and Other Essays on Irish Culture" (1998)
The Idea of Culture (2000)
The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (2001)
The Truth about the Irish (2001)
Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002)
After Theory (2003)
The English Novel: An Introduction (2004)
Holy Terror (2005)
How to Read a Poem (2007)

[edit] Quotation

"Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also, as we have suggested before, rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions." After Theory by Terry Eagleton, 2003.