Terry Eagleton

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Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February 1943, Salford, Greater Manchester) is regarded by many as Britain's most influential living literary critic.[1] Formerly Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford (1992-2001), he is currently John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester. He has written more than forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983); The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996).

Terry Eagleton holding one of his books after a talk in Manchester Mechanics' Institute in 2008
Terry Eagleton holding one of his books after a talk in Manchester Mechanics' Institute in 2008

Contents

[edit] Career

Eagleton obtained his Ph.D. 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 John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Manchester.

At Cambridge, Eagleton was a student of the left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams. He began his literary studies with the 19th and 20th centuries, then adapted to the stringent academic Marxism of the 1970s. He then published an attack on his mentor—Williams' relation to the Marxist tradition was more nuanced—in the pages of the New Left Review, doing so in the mode of the French critic Louis Althusser.

More recently, Eagleton has in a sense looked intellectually back to his Cambridge years, reintegrating cultural studies with more traditional literary theory. During the 1960s, he'd become involved with the left-wing Catholic group Slant, authoring a number of theological articles, as well as a book Towards a New Left Theology. His most recent publications suggest a renewed interest in theological themes. Another significant theoretical influence on Eagleton is psychoanalysis. He has been an important advocate for the work of Slavoj Žižek in the United Kingdom.

[edit] Published thought

[edit] Theory

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983, revised 1996), probably his best-known work, traces the history of the study of texts, from the Romantics of the nineteenth century to the postmodernists of the later twentieth century. Eagleton's thought remains firmly rooted in the Marxist tradition; he has also produced critical work on such more recent modes of thought as structuralism, Lacanian analysis, and deconstruction.

As his memoir The Gatekeeper demonstrates, Eagleton's Marxism is far from a merely theoretical pursuit. He was active in Marxist organisations (most notably the International Socialists, a forerunner to the British Socialist Workers Party), as well as Alan Thornett's Workers Socialist League, whilst in Oxford. He continues to provide political commentary for publications such as the New Statesman, Red Pepper and The Guardian.

After Theory (2003) represents a kind of about-face: a careful indictment of current cultural and literary theory, and what Eagleton regards as the bastardisation of both. He does not, however, conclude that the interdisciplinary study of literature and culture that comprises Theory is without merit. In fact, Eagleton argues that such a merging is effective in opening cultural study to a wider range of significant topics. His indictment instead centers on "relativism"—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 it. Our bodies and their subsequent deaths provide the absolute around which humankind can focus its actions.

Eagleton has also completed a trilogy of works on Irish culture.

[edit] Religion

In October of 2006, Eagleton produced an impassioned, widely-quoted[2] critique of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in the London Review of Books. Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkins' methodology and understanding: "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."[3] He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not so much been attacking organised faith as a sort of rhetorical straw-man: "Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to ‘sophisticated’ religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals."[4]

Although many of his texts include aspects of philosophical debate, Eagleton himself does not claim to be a philosopher, stating with his usual good-humour, "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher, a fact which I am sure some of my reviewers will point out in any case."[5]

[edit] Literary spats

In Autumn 2007, Eagleton's critical observations about Martin Amis—included in the introduction to a 2007 edition his book Ideology—were widely reprinted in the British press.

Eagleton had been disturbed by Amis' own widely quoted writings on "Islamism," directing particular attention to this passage:

"There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suff­­er­­­ing? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan… Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."

Eagleton rejected Amis' prescription, while registering surprise at its source: "[these are] not the ramblings of a British National Party thug...but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." Eagleton drew a connection between Amis as writer and Amis as the son of the sometimes reactionary humourist Kingsley Amis. The younger writer, Eagleton wrote, had learnt more from his father—"a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals"—than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase."

The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Independent, wrote an editorail about the affair; Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict," adding that he would be "unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx".[6] Amis' major complaint was procedural: Eagleton had quoted him writing the above remarks, whereas they were actually "spoken"—excerpts from a newspaper interview about Amis' upcoming book on Islamism, The Second Plane, and therefore taken entirely out of context.

Eagleton's attack on Kingsley Amis (deceased writer) further prompted a response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard wrote the Daily Telegraph, noting that for an "anti-semitic homophobe," it was unusual that the only guests at the Howard-Amis nuptials should have been either Jewish or gay.[7] As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." Eagleton's position is somewhat belied by a reading of Kingley Amis' published novels—on the other hand, Martin Amis himself has characterized Kingsley's political opinions[8]as occasionally reactionary. (Ironically, Kingsley Amis had like Eagleton become a Marxist while a student at Oxford, and remained one for some years afterward.)[9]

Eagleton responded to his comments about Martin Amis by article in The Guardian, claiming that the main bone of contention—the substance of Amis' remarks and views—had got lost amongst the media furore.[1]

[edit] Critical reactions

William Deresiewicz wrote of Eagleton's book After Theory, as follows: "[I]s it that hard to explain what Eagleton's up to? The prolificness, the self-plagiarism, the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of course, the sales figures: Eagleton wishes for capitalism's demise, but as long as it's here, he plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching self-sacrifice, and someone whose careerism at Oxbridge was legendary shouldn't be telling interviewers of his longstanding regret at having turned down a job at the Open University." [2]

The novelist and critic David Lodge, however, writing in the May, 2004 New York Review of Books, took a more nuanced position on both Theory and "After Theory." He concludes,

"Some of Theory's achievements are genuine and permanent additions to knowledge, or intellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite right to assert that we can never go back to a state of pre-Theory innocence about the transparency of language or the ideological neutrality of interpretation... But like all fashions it was bound to have a limited life of novelty and vitality, and we are now living through its decadence without any clear indication of what will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become boringly predictable to many people who were once enthusiastic about it, and that After Theory is most interesting when its focus is furthest from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too."[10]

[edit] Publications

  • The New Left Church [as Terence Eagleton] (1966)
  • Shakespeare and Society
  • Exiles And Émigrés: Studies in Modern Literature (1970)
  • The Body as Language : outline of a new left theology (1970)
  • Criticism & Ideology (1976)
  • Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)
  • Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (1981)
  • The Rape of Clarissa: Writing, Sexuality, and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson (1982)
  • Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983/1996)
  • The Function of Criticism (1984)
  • Saint Oscar (a play about Oscar Wilde)
  • Saints and Scholars (a novel, 1987)
  • Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives (editor) Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989.
  • The Significance of Theory (1989)
  • The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990)
  • Ideology: An Introduction (1991)
  • Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script, The Derek Jarman Film (1993)
  • 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)
  • The Meaning of Life (2007)
  • How to Read a Poem (2007)

[edit] Quotations

  • "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.
  • "In some traditionalist universities not long ago, you could not research on authors who were still alive. This was a great incentive to slip a knife between their ribs one foggy evening, or a remarkable test of patience if your chosen novelist was in rude health and only 34." After Theory, by Terry Eagleton
  • "What perished in the Soviet Union was Marxist only in the sense that the Inquisition was Christian." - Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition 2002 "Marxism and Literary Theory" by Terry Eagleton
  • "Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.” by Terry Eagleton[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "...the man who succeeded F R Leavis as Britain's most influential academic critic." The Independent, 13 October 2007. "Terry Eagleton: Class warrior".
  2. ^ See for instance The Sunday Times, and Alister McGrath's The Dawkins Delusion - there are over 700 Google hits
  3. ^ Terry Eagleton (2006-10-19). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books 28 (20). 
  4. ^ Terry Eagleton (2006-10-19). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books 28 (20). 
  5. ^ The Meaning of Life, (2007) footnote to p. 1: "Perhaps I should add that I am not myself a philosopher..."
  6. ^ Amis launches scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia, The Independent
  7. ^ Family defends 'racist' Sir Kingsley Amis, The Daily Telegraph
  8. ^ Amis, Martin. Experience. Talk/Miramaix Books, 2000
  9. ^ ibid
  10. ^ Lodge, David. New York Review of Books, 27 May, 2004. "Goodbye to All That." http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=17132

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