Literary Theory: An Introduction Second Edition | Terry Eagleton

Literary Theory: An Introduction Second Edition | Terry Eagleton | Vital Theory made comprehensible

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Literary Theory: A...

	Literary Theory: An Introduction Second Edition Terry Eagleton University of Minnesota Press, 1996 - 234 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The first source which actually and completely explains semiotics to me in a way I can understand

I have long appreciated the first edition of this excellent book. Apparently the second edition expands the feminist section (although the feminist section of the bibliography remains similar to the first edition) and includes consideration of post-modernism, which the bright and engaging author considers at greater length, at arm's length, in a separate book. The second edition also includes a new preface, which I admit I have not read. I am still grateful to and involved with and faithful to the first edition.

The author fully and carefully presents very difficult material in a comprehensible and engaging manner, logically, and structured for learning. In short, this is actually an academic expert on literary criticism who can not only write well but can teach, and how rare a beast is that! Terry also supplies us with very valid reasons in his conclusion for caring deeply about the ability to read a text critically. Basically, we thus can perceive truth from propaganda and unreliable sources. We can know when our own government lies to us, and who has an ax to grind or a bill of goods to sell.

This book therefore should be as necessary and required a study for any and every reader as are warnings on a pack of cigarettes. By this book we gain the power to understand and to judge what we read; we learn to read critically and contextually, and to learn that not all which is printed is true. And by this book alone I have finally come to begin to perceive just what is meant by that frequently used and never explained term semiotics. That alone is worth the price of admission. No fooling around!

Seriously, this scholar with great talent and commitment opens the world of literacy to us in a comprehensible manner, without leaving anything out. The subtitle of course remains: An Introduction. This introductory book hopefully serves as a portal for you to explore the many other writings and editings of this excellent teacher, thinker and writer. Learn to read, critically, and become stronger and wiser and free.

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Vital Theory made comprehensible

This book is an invaluable resource for the comprehension of most of the major literary- and other ideological movements- of the twentieth century From T. S. Eliot to Derrida. What impressed me the most is that he makes general, and often very opaque, theories of The Structuralists, Lacan, and Derrida clear . That, in itself, was worth the read. Also,
putting literary theory in a historical, political, and philosohical context is intriguing. However, the last chapter on the Politcal (see Neo-Marxist) is interesting but a little too polemic and doesn't quite tie things together as neatly
as possible, That's OK though. Rather that than a Jane Austen
or standard "lit crit" snoozer.
If you like this book, then After Theory should be next on your
list. Wish, however, he had included Foucault and Baudrillard,
but if you want to know "Theory," Eagleton and Literary Theory is an ideal place to start.

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Lovely, compelling.

Remarkable introduction to several trends of literary criticism in the XX century. I had never seen something like this before. The author presents all critical trends in such a ways as to dissect their founding bases, their theoretical a priori. Bright, insightful, clear, the author, although we should know that he's a marxist by the end of the text, is not willing to push his views on us, but rather takes the opportunities to deconstruct the very founding concepts that have driven marxist analyses worldwide and through history.

Thought provoking and an excellent introduction to literary theory

Terry Eagleton has a clever and no-nonsense approach to the study of literary theory. This book is a must have for anyone interested in the study of literary criticism, as well as introductions to the various schools of critical thought. Also make sure to pick up a handbook of literary terminology.

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An Excellent Work if You Have the Time

Literary Theory: An Introduction is a dense crash-course in contemporary literary theory. The book begins with the chapter "What is literature?" Eagleton explores what literature is and is not, and finally posits literature is a subjective, fluid term, as wrapped in the ideologies of its time as its value and class systems. Then he examines seven literary theories and concludes with a theory of his own, though he strongly maintains that his assertion is no theory, but truth itself.

Eagleton makes the interesting case that English emerged in the mid-to-late nineteenth century to replace a waning religion: "As religion progressively ceases to provide the social `cement', affective values, and basic mythologies by which socially turbulent class-society can be welded together, `English' is constructed as a subject to carry this ideological burden from the Victorian period onwards". Due to a bourgeois fear that the lower class will revolt from a middle class bad example, Matthew Arnolds, a key figure of the time, suggests that, "State-established schools, by linking the middle class to `the best culture of their nation' (the bourgeois culture), will confer on them (the lower class) `a greatness and a noble spirit, which the tone of these classes is not of itself at present adequate to impart'." In this "humanizing" pursuit through the teaching of English, it was believed that, "Since literature, as we know, deals in universal human values rather than in such historical trivia as civil wars, the oppression of women or the dispossession of English peasantry, it could serve to place in cosmic perspective the petty demands of working people for decent living conditions or greater control over their own lives, and might even, with luck, come to render them oblivious of such issues in their high-minded contemplation of eternal truths and beauties." And thus English as an academic subject is born! One more interesting quote from the chapter "The Rise of English": "It is significant, then, that `English' as an academic subject was first institutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics' Institutes, working men's colleges and extension lecturing circuits."

There are seven contemporary literary theories covered in this book: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory, Structuralism, Semiotics, Post-Structuralism, andPsychoanalysis. With each literary theory, Eagleton discusses the major theorists involved, the historical impacts that shaped the theory, and the particulars of that theory.

Eagelton concludes in the final chapter with his own non-theory on Political Criticism. He argues that because literature is a fluid ideology, it is in essence political, meaning it reflects the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations this organization involves. "Indeed literary theory is less an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right than a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times." Eagleton theorizes that if literature is an illusion, then so is literary theory: "It is an illusion first in the sense that literary theory...is really no more than a branch of social ideologies, utterly without any unity or identity which would adequately distinguish it from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cultural and sociological thought; and secondly in the sense that the one hope it has of distinguishing itself--clinging to an object named literature--is misplaced. We must conclude, then, that this book is less an introduction than an obituary, and that we have ended by burying the object we sought to unearth."

What makes this book unique is Eagleton's hypothesis (literature and literary theory are an illusion) and the way he goes about supporting his theory. He begins by examining the subjectivity of literature's definition, then moves into the literary theories themselves, highlighting the historical/period ideologies that helped define these theories, and then makes the analogy that if literature is an ideology and ideology is inherently political, then literature is political. The book is also unique for Eagleton's biting wit and criticism, and the historical impact the book had on literary theory at the time of its publication (1983).

The greatest strengths of this book are Eagleton's passion for the subject, the deep analytical formula he constructs to prove his personal non-theory, and the lush history that surrounds it all. The greatest weakness: while this book has been hailed as an accessible introduction to literary theory, it is by no means easily accessible, but rather coated in academic language, overstatement, unnecessarily lengthy reasoning, etc. I am not a lazy reader and each 5 pages took roughly an hour to read.

Urgency rating:
-The urgency rating is quite variable dependent on the reader. If you have always been hoping for a glimpse into literary theory and have the hours to spend combing through, reflecting, ans digesting the material, then hurry! This is the book for you! If you have already studied literary theory and consider your dues paid in full, don't have much time to spare, or have the attention span of a fruit fly (me), then skip this one.

I walked away with a much greater historical knowledge of the rise of English as an academic subject, the subjective definition of literature, and a passable understanding of most of the theories discussed. Not bad for a Beginner!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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