A literary master’s entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasureWhat makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be full of concealed loathing, resentment, and aggression? In this accessible, delightfully entertaining book, Terry Eagleton addresses these intriguing questions and a host of others. How to Read Literature

A trenchant analysis of sacrifice as the foundation of the modern, as well as the ancient, social orderThe modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter and moral rectitude, were at odds. In this analysis, Terry Eagleton makes a compelling argument that the idea of sacri...

An engaging, insightful meditation on death, from one of our leading mindsDeath is ever-present in literature. From Shakespearean tragedies to elegiac poetry, the spectre of human mortality has always haunted writers.In this wide-ranging and personal account, Terry Eagleton examines the ways in which western culture has reflected on death. Eagleton looks at the works of novelists, poets, and playwrights—including Andrew Marvell and Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beck...

The golden age of cultural theory (the product of a decade and a half, from 1965 to 1980) is long past. We are living now in its aftermath, in an age which, having grown rich in the insights of thinkers like Althusser, Barthes and Derrida, has also moved beyond them. What kind of new, fresh thinking does this new era demand? Eagleton concludes that cultural theory must start thinking ambitiously again - not so that it can hand the West its legitimation, but so that it can seek to make sens...

One of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation forcefully argues against Marx's irrelevancyIn this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's o...

**One of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation forcefully argues against Marx's irrelevancy"Reading a book by Terry Eagleton is like watching fireworks."—Dennis O'Brien, Christian Century"[Eagleton is] a witty, insightful thinker with a penchant for glib asides and wry dashes of humor. It’s probably the only book that makes references to Tiger Woods and Mel Gibson along with Charles Fourier and Michel Foucault."—Michael Patrick Brady, PopMatters**...

One of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation forcefully argues against Marx's irrelevancyIn this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's o...

In a virtuoso display of erudition, thoughtfulness and humour, Terry Eagleton teases apart the concept of hope as it has been (often mistakenly) conceptualised over six millennia, from ancient Greece to today. He distinguishes hope from simple optimism, cheeriness, desire, idealism or adherence to the doctrine of Progress, bringing into focus a standpoint that requires reflection and commitment, arises from clear-sighted rationality, can be cultivated by practice and self-discipline, and w...

Terry Eagleton looks back across sixty years to an extraordinary critical milieu that transformed the study of literatureBefore the First World War, traditional literary scholarship was isolated from society at large. In the years following, a younger generation of critics came to the fore. Their work represented a reaction to the impoverishment of language in a commercial, utilitarian society increasingly under the sway of film, advertising, and the popular press....

Oxford professor, best-selling author, preeminent literary critic, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, Terry Eagleton knows all about the claims of competing worlds. One of his earliest roles growing up Catholic in Protestant England was as "the gatekeeper"-the altar boy who at reverend mother's nod literally closed the door on young women taking the veil, separating the sanctity of the convent from earthly temptations and family obligations.Often scathingly funny, frequently te...

A clear-sighted and entertaining defence of literary realism, and an account of its key practitionersRealist fiction is one of the most enduring artforms history has ever witnessed. By describing the intricate inner life of its characters, or widening its focus to set their experience in context, it can evoke the reader’s sympathies as few other forms can. Yet it is also by and large a product of the middle classes: boldly individualist and fascinated by money, pro...