Terry Eagleton

Terence Francis "Terry" Eagleton FBA[1] (born 22

February 1943)[1] is a prominent British literary theorist,
critic and public intellectual.[5][6][7][8] He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster
University, Professor of Cultural Theory at the National
University of Ireland and Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Literature at The University of Notre
Dame.[9]

he graduated with a First.[4] He later described his undergraduate experience as a waste of time.[3] In 1964,
he moved to Jesus College, Cambridge, where as a junior research fellow and doctoral student, he became
the youngest fellow at the college since the eighteenth
century.[11] He was supervised by Raymond Williams.[4]
It was during this period that his leftist convictions began to take hold, and he edited a radical Catholic leftist
[4]
Eagleton has published over forty books, but remains periodical called Slant.
best known for Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), In 1969 he moved to Oxford where he became a fellow
which has sold over 750,000 copies.[10] The work eluci- and tutor of Wadham College (19691989), Linacre Coldated the emerging literary theory of the period. He has lege (19891993) and St Catherines College, becoming
also been a prominent critic of postmodernism, publish- Thomas Warton Professor of English in 1992. At Wading works such as The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996). ham, Eagleton ran a well-known seminar on Marxist litFormerly the Thomas Warton Professor of English Liter- erary theory which, in the 1980s, metamorphosed into
ature at the University of Oxford (19922001) and John the radical pressure group Oxford English Limited and its
Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory at the Uni- journal News from Nowhere: Journal of the Oxford Enversity of Manchester (20012008), Eagleton has held glish Faculty Opposition, to which he contributed several
visiting appointments at universities around the world in- pieces. In 2001 Eagleton left Oxford to occupy the John
cluding Cornell, Duke, Iowa, Melbourne, Trinity College Edward Taylor chair of Cultural Theory at the University
of Manchester.
in Dublin, and Yale.[11]
Eagleton delivered Yale University's 2008 Terry Lectures
and the 2010 Edinburgh Giord Lecture entitled The God
Debate.[12] He gave the 2010 Richard Price Memorial
Lecture at Newington Green Unitarian Church, speaking on The New Atheism and the War on Terror.[13] In
2009 he published a book which accompanied his lectures on religion, entitled Reason, Faith, and Revolution:
Reections on the God Debate.

3 Career

He began his literary studies with the 19th and 20th centuries, then conformed to the stringent academic Marxism of the 1970s. He then published an attack on his
mentor Williamss relation to the Marxist tradition in the
pages of the New Left Review, in the mode of the French
critic Louis Althusser. In the 1960s, he became involved
with the left-wing Catholic group Slant, authoring a num1 Early life
ber of theological articles (including A Marxist Interpretation of Benediction), as well as a book Towards a New
Eagleton was born to Francis Paul Eagleton and his wife,
Left Theology.
[14]
Rosaleen (ne Riley).
He grew up in a working-class
Irish Catholic family in Salford, with roots in County Galway. His mothers side of the family had strong Irish republican sympathies. He served as an altar boy at a local 3.1 Literary Theory
Carmelite convent where he was responsible for escorting novice nuns taking their vows, a role referred to in Literary Theory: an Introduction (1983, revised 1996),
probably his best-known work, traces the history of the
the title of his memoir The Gatekeeper.[15]
study of texts, from the Romantics of the nineteenth century to the postmodernists of the later twentieth century. Eagletons approach to literary criticism remains
2 Education and academia
rmly rooted in the Marxian tradition though he has
also incorporated techniques and ideas from more reHe was educated at De La Salle College, a Roman cent modes of thought as structuralism, Lacanian analCatholic grammar school in Salford.[3] In 1961 he went to ysis, and deconstruction. As his memoir The Gatekeeper
read English at Trinity College, Cambridge from where recounts, Eagletons Marxism has never been solely an
1

4 CRITICISM OF MARTIN AND KINGSLEY AMIS

academic pursuit. He was active in the International Socialists (along with Christopher Hitchens) and then the
Workers Socialist League whilst in Oxford. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
After Theory (2003) represents a kind of about-face: an
indictment of current cultural and literary theory, and
what Eagleton regards as the bastardisation of both. He
does not conclude that the interdisciplinary study of literature and culture that comprises Theory is without merit.
He argues that such a merging is eective in opening cultural study to a wider range of signicant topics. His indictment instead centres on relativismtheorists and
postmodernitys 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.

3.2

Dawkins, Hitchens and the New Atheism

Eagleton has become a vocal critic of what has been

called the New Atheism. In October 2006, he published
a review of Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion in the
London Review of Books. Eagleton begins by questioning Dawkinss 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. Eagleton further writes, Nor
does [Dawkins] understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did
not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic
need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us.[16]
He concludes by suggesting Dawkins has not been attacking organised faith so much 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 outank any more reective 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.[17]
3.2.1

Terry and Giord Lectures

In April 2008 Eagleton delivered Yale University's Terry

Lectures with the title of his subject being, Faith and Fundamentalism: Is belief in Richard Dawkins necessary for
salvation? constituting a continuation of the critique he
had begun in The London Review of Books. Introducing
his rst lecture with an admission of ignorance of both

theology and science Eagleton goes on to arm, All I

can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know
just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchensa
couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the
solitary signier Ditchkinsis talking out of the back of
his neck.[18][19] His Terry Lectures were published in
2009, in Reason, Faith, and Revolution.

3.3 Football
Eagleton sees football as a new opium of the people distracting ordinary people from the type of social change
Eagleton wants. Eagleton looks pessimistic as to whether
this distraction can be ended.

4 Criticism of Martin and Kingsley

Amis

Eagleton in 2012

In late 2007, a critique of Martin Amis included in the

introduction to a 2007 edition of Eagletons book Ideology was widely reprinted in the British press. In it, Eagleton took issue with Amis widely quoted writings on
"Islamism", directing particular attention to one specic
passage from an interview with Ginny Dougary published
in the Times on 9 September 2006.
What can we do to raise the price of them
doing this? Theres a denite urge don't you
have it? to say, 'The Muslim community
will have to suer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suering? 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 stu, until it hurts the whole community and they start
getting tough with their children ... Its a huge
dereliction on their part.[21]

3
Eagleton criticised Amis and expressed surprise as to
up to? The prolicness, the self-plagiarism,
its source, stating: "[these are] not the ramblings of a
the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of
British National Party thug ... but the reections of Marcourse, the sales gures: Eagleton wishes for
tin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan litcapitalisms demise, but as long as its here, he
erary world. He drew a connection between Amis and
plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone
his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis). Eagleton went
who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching
on to write that Martin Amis had learned more from
self-sacrice, and someone whose careerism at
his father whom Eagleton described as a reactionary
Oxbridge was legendary shouldn't be telling inracist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reterviewers of his longstanding regret at having
viler of women, gays and liberals than merely how to
turned down a job at the Open University.[27]
turn a shapely phrase. Eagleton added there was something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Novelist and critic David Lodge, writing in the May 2004
Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation New York Review of Books on Theory and After Theory,
that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout concluded:
the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they nd
themselves for the rst time on the sticky end of the same
Some of Theorys achievements are genuine
treatment. [22]
and permanent additions to knowledge, or inThe essay became a cause clbre in British literary cirtellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite
cles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Inright to assert that we can never go back to a
dependent, wrote an article[23] about the aair, to which
state of pre-Theory innocence about the transAmis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton an ideparency of language or the ideological neutralological relict ... unable to get out of bed in the mornity of interpretation ... But like all fashions
ing without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx.[24]
it was bound to have a limited life of novelty
Amis said the views Eagleton attributed to him as his conand vitality, and we are now living through its
sidered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a
decadence without any clear indication of what
tempting urge, in relation to the need to raise the price
will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become
of terrorist actions. Eagletons personal comments on
boringly predictable to many people who were
Kingsley Amis prompted a further response from Kingsonce enthusiastic about it, and that After Theleys widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard
ory is most interesting when its focus is furthest
wrote to The Daily Telegraph, noting that for a supposed
from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence
anti-semitic homophobe, it was peculiar that the only
that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too.[28]
guests at the Howard-Amis nuptials were either Jewish
or gay.[25] 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 ho- 6 Family
mosexual. In a later interview, Howard added: I have
never even heard of this man Eagleton. But he seems to Eagleton is married to his second wife, an American acabe a rather lethal combination of a Roman Catholic and demic, Willa Murphy, with whom he has a son. The coua Marxist ... He strikes me as like a spitting cobra: if you ple live in Dublin, but own homes in Manchester, where
get within his range he'll unleash some poison.[26] Colin Eagleton teaches, and in County Londonderry, where
Howard, Lady Elizabeth Howards homosexual brother, Murphy is a lecturer at Northern Irelands University of
called Prof Eagleton a little squirt, adding that Sir Ulster. Eagleton has two other sons by his rst marriage,
Kingsley, far from being homophobic, had extended an which ended in 1976 after ten years.[5]
aectionate friendship to him and helped him come to
terms with his sexuality.[25]
Eagleton defended his comments about Martin and
Kingsley Amis in The Guardian, claiming the main bone
of contention the substance of Amis remarks and views
had been lost amid the media furore.[22]

Critical reactions

William Deresiewicz wrote of After Theory, Eagletons

book, as follows:
"[I]s it that hard to explain what Eagletons

7 Publications
The New Left Church [as Terence Eagleton] (1966)
Shakespeare and Society; critical studies in Shakespearean drama. Schocken Books. 1967. ISBN
0805203060.
Exiles And migrs: Studies in Modern Literature.
1970. ISBN 0701115963.
The Body as Language: outline of a new left theology
(1970)

8
Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Bronts
(1975)
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)

REFERENCES

Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (2008)

Jameson and Form. New Left Review (New Left
Review) II (59): 123137. SeptemberOctober
2009. (Discussing Fredric Jameson.)
Literary Theory (2008)
Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reections on the
God Debate (2009)
On Evil (2010)

Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983)

Why Marx Was Right (2011)

The Function of Criticism (1984)

The Event of Literature (2012)

Saint Oscar (a play about Oscar Wilde)

How to Read Literature. Yale University Press.

2013. ISBN 9780300190960.

Saints and Scholars (a novel, 1987)

Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives (1989; editor)
The Signicance of Theory (1989)

Culture and the Death of God. Yale University

Press. 2014. ISBN 9780300203998.
Hope without Optimism. University of Virginia
Press. 2015. ISBN 9780300217124.

The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990)

Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (1990)
Ideology: An Introduction (1991/2007)
Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script, The Derek
Jarman Film (1993)
Literary Theory (1996)
The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996)
Heathcli and the Great Hunger (1996)
Marx (1997)
Crazy John and the Bishop and Other Essays on Irish
Culture (1998)
The Idea of Culture (2000)
The gatekeeper: a memoir. Allen Lane/St. Martins
Press. 2002. ISBN 0312291221. Retrieved July
2013.
The Truth about the Irish (2001)
Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002)
After Theory (2003)
Figures of dissent: Reviewing Fish, Spivak, Zizek and
Others (2003)
The English Novel: An Introduction (2005)
Holy Terror (2005)
The Meaning of Life. Oxford University Press.
2007. ISBN 9780199210701.
How to Read a Poem (2007)

8 References
[1] Prof Terry Eagleton prole, Debretts People of Today,
FBA Prole
[2] T. Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (1991), pg. 131.
[3] James Smith (2013). Terry Eagleton. Wiley. ISBN 9780-7456-5795-0.
[4] James Smith (2013). Terry Eagleton. John Wiley & Sons.
ISBN 978-0-7456-5795-0.
[5] Vallely, Paul (13 October 2007). Terry Eagleton: Class
warrior. The Independent. ...the man who succeeded F
R Leavis as Britains most inuential academic critic.
[6] Professor John Sitter, Chairman of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame and Editor of The
Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry, has
describes Eagleton as someone widely regarded as the
most inuential contemporary literary critic and theorist
in the English-speaking world
[7] Eagleton himself has also replaced Leavis as the best
known and most inuential academic critic in Britain.
Duke Maskell, as cited by Nicholas Wroe
[8] Terry Eagleton is arguably the most inuential contemporary British literary critic and theorist. James Smith.
Cited in the Introduction to Terry Eagleton: A Critical
Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers) Polity Press,
2008.
[9] Blakey, Marie (11 May 2009). Terry Eagleton Returns
to ND as Distinguished Visitor in English Department.
College of Arts and Letters. University of Notre Dame.
[10] http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/
a-theoretical-blow-for-democracy/160508.article

[11] Departmental web page at Lancaster

[12] Professor Terry Eagleton. College of Humanities & Social Science. University of Edinburgh.

10 External links

[13] Terry Eagleton to speak at Newington Green. Hackney

Citizen. 29 August 2010. Retrieved 30 December 2011.

Why Marx Was Right In his book Why Marx was

Right, Eagleton makes the case for Marx's resurrection, challenging objections and explaining why
his thought remains as relevant as ever.

[14] EAGLETON, Prof. Terence Francis at Whos Who

2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2011; online edn November 2011;
accessed 23 September 2012

High Priest of Lit Crit, The Guardian, 2 February 2002 prole on the publication of Eagletons
memoir, The Gatekeeper

[15] Andrews, Kernan (18 December 2008). Terry Eagleton

taking on the capitalists and atheists in Galway. Galway
Advertiser.

Some articles by Eagleton, London Review of Books

website

[16] Eagleton, Terry (19 October 2006). Lunging, Flailing,

Mispunching. London Review of Books 28 (20). Retrieved 26 November 2006.
[17] Eagleton, Terry (19 October 2006). Lunging, Flailing,
Mispunching. London Review of Books 28 (20). Retrieved 1 September 2013.
[18] Terry Eagleton (lecturer) (1 April 2008). Christianity Fair
and Foul (rm) (Podcast). Yale University. Event occurs
at 6:23. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
[19] Eagleton, Terry (April 2008). Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?". Dwight H. Terry Lectureship. Yale University.

Article on socialism at redpepper.org.uk

The roots of terror at redpepper.org.uk
Terry Eagleton at British Council: Literature
Tim Adams, The Armchair Revolutionary (interview), The Observer, 16 December 2007
Dawkins/Eagleton knol by Klaus Rohde
Jonathan Derbyshire, The Task of the Critic: Terry
Eagleton in Dialogue, New Statesman, 11 March
2010

[20] Football: a dear friend to capitalism

Terry Eagleton, In Praise of Marx (article), The

Chronicle Review, 10 April 2011

[21] The voice of experience at ginnydougary.co.uk, 17

September 2006

An Interview with Terry Eagleton (Oxonian Review)", with Alex Barker and Alex Niven

[22] Eagleton, Terry (10 October 2007). Rebuking obnoxious views is not just a personality kink. The Guardian
(London). Retrieved 1 July 2008.

Terry Eagleton and Marxist Literary Criticism by

Ian Birchall (1982)

[23] Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin (8 October 2007). Its time for

civilised and honest engagement. The Independent. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
[24] Brown, Jonathan (12 October 2007). Amis launches
scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia. The
Independent. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
[25] Cockcroft, Lucy (10 October 2007). Family defends
'racist' Sir Kingsley Amis. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 July 2008.
[26] Levy, Georey (11 October 2007). Spicier than a novel,
the literary feud raging between the Amis dynasty and the
Marxist critic. Mail Online.
[27] Deresiewicz, William (29 January 2004). The Business
of Theory. The Nation. Retrieved 29 October 2015.
[28] Lodge, David (27 May 2004). Goodbye to All That (fee
required). The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 1
July 2008.

Further reading
James Smith, Terry Eagleton, Polity, 2008.

11

11
11.1

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Terry Eagleton Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Eagleton?oldid=703056221 Contributors: KF, Rbrwr, Jahsonic, Tpbradbury, Smb1001, JackofOz, Wereon, Somercet, Cobra libre, Aphaia, Pteron, Chowbok, Andycjp, Ukexpat, Mirtn, Canterbury Tail,
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