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Life
| 1943- ; b. Salford, nr. Manchester; descended from Galway grandparents to migrated to Manchester [‘first generation English’'; son of an engineering worker in the largest such factory in the country who won a Grammar School place but could not afford to take it up; one of five siblings, two boys dying in infancy, and to two girls growing up to become school teachers; ed. Carmelite Convent and later De La Salle Grammar School; went up to Cambridge,1961; studied under Raymond Williams - who arrived at Jesus College in the same year; assisted Fr. Laurence Bright (Dominican) in founding the leftist Catholic journal Slant; research fellow and teacher under Williams at Jesus College before moving to Oxford in 1969, and afterwards Wharton Professor of English Literature, St Catherine’s College, Oxford; reviewed Sean Lucy, ed., Irish Poets in English [inter al.], for The Tablet (July 1973) |
| issued Criticism and Ideology (1976), Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), and other works considered as the inspiration of Anglophone theory studies; visiting professor at Brigham Young (Mormon) University; Ida Beam Lecturer, University of Iowa (Sept., 1984); appt. Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow, 2001, and subsequently John Edward Taylor Professor of English, Manchester Univ.; his Irish writings incl. Saints and Scholars, a novel; and plays, St. Oscar (Guildhall, 25 Sept. 1989), featuring Wilde’s deconstruction of Victorian stereotypes of race and gender; wrote The White, the Gold, and the Gangrene, play set in cell of James Connolly before execution, performed by Dubblejoint (An Chulturlann, W. Belfast, March 1993), and later broadcast on BBC3; screen-play [with others] for Wittgenstein (1993), prod. for TV by Tariq Ali, and dir. by David Jarman; |
| wrote God’s Locusts (BBC 1995), a play about famine; also Disappearances [q.d.]; lectured on “Literary Exiles and Emigrés” at Parnell Summer School, Wicklow, 1996; criticised the theologically underpowerd atheism of Richard Dawkin, in London Review of Books (20 Sept. 2006): issued The Truth about the Irish (1999), a cultural squib; literary criticism incl. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1995) and Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-century Ireland (2000); gave lecture Joyce and Modernism in the Joyce Perspectives 2001 Series [Lecture 3], Wed. 4th Feb. 2001; issued Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2002); also After Theory (2003), Holy Terror (2005), a meditation; issued The Meaning of Life (2007) and How to Read a Poem (2007); |
| criticised Martin Amis’s The Second Plane (2007) for downright racism, and engaged in exchanges with the author, Summer 2007; gave public lecture, “The Death of Criticism?” at Hull Univ., May 2008.; issued Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (2009); issued Why Marx Was Right (2011); appealed for understanding of the rationale behind Woolwich murder perpetrated by hejadhist Michael Adebolajo and a younger associate on 23rd May 2013, citing the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan (Guardian, Sun. 26 May 2013); posts incl. John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester; Bailrigg Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster; Chair of Cultural Theory at the National University of Ireland, Galway. |
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| Recent Eagleton on YouTube | ||
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| “Death of Criticism” (Berkeley, 2010) |
“The God Debate”
(Edinburgh, 2010) |
“Culture & the Death of God” (Nottingham, 2102) |
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Works
| See short list of titles by Eagleton - as attached. |
| Monographs | ||
| Irish cultural studies | ||
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| Criticism & Theory | ||
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| Essays | ||
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| Miscellaneous | ||
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| Articles (selected)* | ||
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| *see further unlisted extracts under Quotations, infra. | ||
| Drama | ||
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| Autobiography | ||
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| Miscellaneous | ||
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See also sundry reviews, unlisted here, in Quotations [infra]. For further reviews & comments quoted elsewhere in this website see Roy Foster [q.v.], Denis Donoghue [q.v.], “Father Prout” [Francis Sylvester Mahony; q.v.], Oscar Wilde [q.v.] Jonathan Swift [q.v.], et mult. al.
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Bibliographical details
The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1990), 426pp.; CONTENTS: Free particulars; Law of the heart: Shaftesbury, Hume, Burke; Kantian imaginary; Schiller and hegemony; World as artefact: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; Death of desire: Arthur Schopenhauer; Absolute ironies: Søren Kierkegaard; Marxist sublime; True illusions: Friedrich Nietzsche; Name of the father: Sigmund Freud ; Politics of being: Martin Heidegger; Marxist rabbi: Walter Benjamin; Art after Auschwitz: Theodor Adorno; From the Polis to postmodernism.Literary Theory: An Introduction [1st edn.; 1983; 2nd edn.] (Oxford: Blackwell 1996), 234pp. Preface to the Second Edition [vii]; Preface [ix]; Introduction: What is Literature? [1]; 1. The Rise of English [15]; 2. Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory [47]; 3. Structuralism and Semiotics [79]; 4. Post-Structuralism [110]; 5. Psychoanalysis [131]; Conclusion: Political Criticism [169]; Afterword [190]; Notes [209]; Bibliography [217]; Index [224]. Note: First edition 1983; reps. 1983 [3 times]; rep. annually 1985-96; 2nd edn. 1996; rep. 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, &c.]
Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso 1991), and Do. [rep.; ‘new and updated edition’] 2007), xxiv, 242pp. [ded. For Norman Feltes; Notes, Further Reading, Index, 225pp. chaps: intro. to the 2007 Edn.; Introduction; What is Ideology; Ideological strategies; From the Enlightement to the Second International; From Lukacs to Gramsci; From Adorno to Bourdieu; From Schopenhauer to Sorel; Discourse and Ideology; Conclusion see extracts, attached.]
Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso 1995), CONTENTS: Preface [ix]; Heathcliff and the Great Hunger [1]; Ascendancy and Hegemony [27]; Homage to Francis Hutcheson [104]; Changing the Question [124]; Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel [145]; Cultural Politics from Davis to Joyce [226]; The Archaic Avant Garde [273]; Oscar and George [320]; Index [342]
Crazy John and the Bishop (Cork UP: Field Day 1998), x, 335pp. CONTENTS: Preface [ix]; The Hidden Dunkin [1]; Crazy John and the Bishop [17]; The Good-Natured Gael [68]; The Masochism of Thomas Moore [140]; Cork and the Carnivalesque [158]; Home and Away: Internal Emigres in the Irish Novel [212]; The Ryan Line [249]; Yeats and Poetic Form [273]; Beckett’s Paradoxes [296]; Revisionism Revisited [308]; Index [329].
Publisher's notice indicates that among the writers treated additionally to those named in the chapter-titles are: Bishop Berkeley, Thomas Moore, Oliver Goldsmith, Francis Hutcheson, Laurence Sterne, Richard Steele, Edmund Burke, Maria Edgeworth, W. B. Yeats, Samuel Beckett, James Stephens, Charles Lever, Austin Clarke, Kate O'Brien and Francis Stuart, William Dunkin, John Toland, Frederick Ryan, “Father Prout”, William McGinn, Shan Bullock, Canon Sheehan, and George Birmingham. (Amazon Books - online.)
Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-century Ireland (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1999), 177pp. CONTENTS: Preface. 1. Colonial Intellectuals. 2. Portrait of a Clerisy. 3. Savants and Society. 4. The Dismal Science. 5. Young Irelanders and Others. Index. [Covers William Wilde, Charles Lever, Samuel Ferguson, Isaac Butt, and Sheridan Le Fanu; Young Ireland; Dublin University Magazine; employs Antonio Gramsci’s definitions of ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ intellectuals.
After Theory (London:Allen Lane 2003), 225pp. [Index, 223ff.] CONTENTS: Prefatory note [1x]; 1. The Politics of Amnesia [1]; 2. The Rise and Fall of Theory [23]; 3. The Path to Postmodernism [41]; 4. Losses and Gains; [5] Truth, Virtue and Objectivity [103]; 6. Morality [140]; 7. Revolution, Foundations and Fundamentalists [174]; 8. Death, Evil and Non-being [208]; Index [223]. See extracts.
The English Novel: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell 2005), ix, 365pp. CONTENTS: ‘What is a novel?’; ‘Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift’; ‘Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson’; ‘Laurence Stern’; ‘Walter Scott and Jane Austen’; ‘The Brontës’; ‘Charles Dickens’; ‘George Eliot’; ‘Thomas Hardy’; ‘Henry James’; ‘Henry James’; ‘Joseph Conrad’; ‘D. H. Lawrence’; ‘James Joyce’; ‘Virginia Woolf’; ‘Postscript: after the Wake’.
How to Read a Poem (Oxford: Blackwell 2007), ix, 182pp. CONTENTS: Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. The Functions of Criticism. The End of Criticism? Politics and Rhetoric. The Death of Experience. 2. What is Poetry? Poetry and Prose. Poetry and Morality. Poetry and Fiction. Poetry and Pragmatism. Poetic Language. 3. Formalists. Literariness. Estrangement. The Semiotics of Yury Lotman. The Incarnational Fallacy. 4. In Pursuit of Form. The Meaning of Form. Form Versus Content. Form as Transcending Content. Poetry and Performance. Two American Examples. 5. How to Read a Poem. Is Criticism Just Subjective. Estrangement. Tone, Mood and Pitch. Intensity and Pace. Texture. Syntax, Grammar and Punctuation. Ambiguity. Punctuation. Rhyme. Rhythm and Metre. Imagery. 6. Four Nature Poems. ’Ode to Evening’. ‘the Solitary Reaper’. ’God’s Grandeur’. ’Fifty Faggots’. Glossary. Index.
Trouble with Strangers: A Study of Ethics (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell 2009), vii, 347pp. CONTENTS: The insistence of the imaginary; Introduction: The mirror stage; Sentiment and sensibility; Francis Hutcheson and David Hume; Edmund Burke and Adam Smith; The sovereignty of the symbolic; Introduction: The symbolic order; Spinoza and the death of desire; Kant and the moral law; Law and desire in measure for measure; The reign of the real; Introduction: Pure desire; Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche; Fictions of the real; Levinas, Derrida and Badiou; The banality of goodness.
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Criticism| [Selected] |
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Commentary
See separate file, infra.
Quotations
See separate file, infra.
| COPAC listing at 2001 |
| The New Left Church: Essays (1966); Shakespeare and society: Critical Studies in Shakespearean drama (1967, 1970); ed., with Brian Wicker, From culture to revolution: The Slant Symposium, 1967 (1968); Directions: pointers for the post-conciliar Church (1968); The body as language: outline of a ‘new left’ theology (1970); The body as language: outline of a ’new left’ theology (1970); Exiles and émigrés: studies in modern literature (1970); Jude the obscure introduced by Terry Eagleton [notes by P.N. Furbank] (1975); Myths of power: a Marxist study of the Brontë (1975, 1988); Marxism and literary critism (1977); Criticism and ideology: a study in Marxist literary theory (1978); Criticism and ideology: a study of Marxist literary theory (1976, 1978, 1998); Walter Benjamin, or, Towards a revolutionary criticism (1981); The rape of Clarissa: writing, sexuality and class struggle in Samuel Richardson (1982, 1989); Literary theory: an introduction (1983, 1996); The function of criticism from The Spectator to post-structuralism (1984, 1996); The end of English (1986) [lecture]; Against the grain: essays (1975-1985 (1986); Saints and scholars: A Novel (1987, 1990); William Shakespeare (Blackwell 1986), 186pp.; Nationalism, colonialism and literature: nationalism: irony and commitment (Field Day 1988); Einführung in die Literaturtheorie (1988, 1997); Raymond Williams: critical perspectives (Cambridge: Polity 1989), ix, 235pp.+10pp. of pls.; The significance of theory (1989, 1990); Saint Oscar: A Play (1989), rep. in Saint Oscar, and other plays (1997); The ideology of the aesthetic (1990); with F. Jameson, E.W. Said, Nationalism, colonialism, and literature (1990) [Field Day Pamphs.]; Ideology: an introduction (1991, 1994); ed., Plays, prose writings and poems of Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 (1991);The crisis of contemporary culture [An inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 27 November 1992 (1993); Heathcliff and the great hunger: studies in Irish culture (1995); ed., with Drew Milne, Marxist literary theory: a reader (1996); Marx and freedom (1997); The illusions of postmodernism (1997); The Eagleton reader (1998); Crazy John and the bishop and other essays on Irish culture (1998); The truth about the Irish (1999); Scholars and rebels in nineteenth-century Ireland (Blackwell 1999), 177pp.;The idea of culture (2000); contrib. to Julie Scanlon and Amy Waste, eds., Crossing boundaries: thinking through literature (2001); The gatekeeper: a memoir (2001). |
| COPAC (film) |
| Raymond Williams: A tribute (1988) [video of discussion]; Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton script; the Derek Jarman Film (London: British Film Inst. 1993), 151pp.; Wittgenstein [video-cass.] (Connoisseur 1990; British Film Inst., 1993) [75 mins.] |
| There is a Wikpedia webpage on Eagleton [link]. |
London Review of Books lists numerous articles by Eagleton accessible through the Search engine at their website [link], e.g., ‘Pork Chops and Pineapples’, review of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis [rep. edn.], in LRB, Vol. 25, No. 20 23 Oct.2003.
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Notes
Disappearances [q.d.], a play about a Third World poet who becomes a literary star in the English-speaking world, and is caught up in revolutionary turmoil at home when a fellow-expatriate, Raan, tries to persuade him to take office as Prime Minister leading to the threatened academic black-listing of his dg. by the Foreign Office.
James Joyce (1): Terence Killeen, reporting on the James Joyce Symposium, Dublin (2002), writes: ‘Also memorable was Terry Eagleton’s suave performance on the closing day, a lecture which may not have told us much about Joyce but which reinterpreted Irish literary history in the light of a highly sophisticated Marxism, leaving many in the audience with a vague feeling of unease yet at a loss for a coherent response. It had the supreme merit, therefore, of making people think.’ (The Irish Times, 1 July 2002.)
Cf., James Joyce Centre in Association with The Irish Times present Joyce Perspectives 2001, Lecture 3: Terry Eagleton, ‘Joyce and Modernism’ (Wed. 4th Feb. 8p.m.; James Joyce Centre, 35 Nth. Gt. George’s St.). Series runs up to 14 March.
James Joyce (2): Note that Eagleton greeted Colin MacCabe’s James Joyce and the Revolution of the Word (1978) in the New Statesman with the words, ‘[this is (this is] the most exciting and original book on Joyce to have appeared for many years’ (See COPAC online, under MacCabe; accessed 10.08.2009.)[ top ]
Under-class: A two-day conference, “Understanding Class in Ireland”, at 11 a.m [11 Dec. 1999], in Arts Block, UCD; speakers include Prof Erik Olin Wright, an authority on class structure in the US, Prof Terry Eagleton of Oxford University, Prof Kathleen Lynch (UCD), and Prof Christopher Whelan of the Economic and Social Research Institute. (Irish Times Notice, 11 Dec. 1999.)
Master-class: ‘Terry Eagleton, Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester will deliver a Master Class to IRCHSS Post-Graduate Scholars and Post-Doctoral Fellows at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, on 14 November 2003. Professor Eagleton’s seminar is titled “Irish Studies: The Resistance to Reason”. Professor Eagleton who began his academic career as a Victorianist, is a specialist in literary and cultural theory. He is also particularly interested in the English-language literature and culture of Ireland. [...]’ (See Irish Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences / Current News, Sept. 2003 [link].)
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“A Novel Choice” [Irish Times/James Joyce Centre lect. series]: Terry Eagleton selects The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne [‘A marvellous deconstruction of the novel itself. A carnivalesque riot. He realises that the novel had no rules and really mucks about with it.]; Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth [‘Maybe it’s an obvious choice, but it is marvellous and original in form. It is one of the earliest examples of what we would now call the unreliable narrator. You cannot be quite sure if they are on the level or not and that allows for a lot of subtlety’]; Melmouth The Wanderer by Charles Maturin [‘A wonderful, spooky, gothic and elaborate novel full of horrors and paranoia. Again, it’s very anti-realistic. But as well as spooky, it dramatises the paranoia of the early 19th century gentry in a vivid way’]. (See The Irish Times, 27 Sept. 2003, announcing a lect. series based on the ten 10 most voted for novels on a list provided by the commissioned lecturers to be hosted by the James Joyce Centre, 23 Oct. - 27 Nov. 2003.) See also Irish Times notice in 2001: the James Joyce Centre in Association with The Irish Times presents Joyce Perspectives 2001, Lecture 3, Terry Eagleton, Joyce and Modernism (Wed. 4th Feb. 8 p.m.; James Joyce Centre, 35 Nth. Gt. George’s St.). Series runs to 14 March.
The Gatekeeper (2001) takes its title from its author’s duties as an altar boy at a Carmelite convent. After young nuns took their vows, they said goodbye to their parents forever. He escorted grieving parents who were never to see their daughters again, out the door. (See Dinitia Smith, ’Cultural Theorists, Start Your Epitaphs’, in NY Times, 3 Jan. 2004.)
Englishman in Ireland: In his Introduction to Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso 1995), Eagleton quotes Carleton’s remark on Thackeray: ‘he writes well about Ireland, for an Englishman.’ (p.ix.)
Mancunians: Eagleton’s doctoral supervisees at the University of Manchester incl. Emily Cuming, “Form and subjectivity in autobiographical writing: Four Contemporary Irish Texts” (Manchester 2006); [with Prof. Murray Pittock,] Claire V. Nally, Envisioning Ireland: Occult Nationalism in the Work of W. B. Yeats (Manchester 2006); Gavin Grindon, “Carnival against Capital: The Theory of Revolution as Festival” [PhD diss.] (Manchester 2007).
Hull University (Scarborough Campus) - Press Release (18.4.08): Reportedly described as “That dreadful Terry Eagleton” by Prince Charles when they were at Trinity College Cambridge in the 1960s, Professor Eagleton studied with the famous Marxist Raymond Williams, before going on to work at Wadham College, Oxford. An influential playwright, critic and cultural theorist, his work spans several decades and includes the seminal Literary Theory: An Introduction [1983]. He also publishes on topics ranging from from religion to Irish Studies, the Brontes and Shakespeare, and published his memoir, The Gatekeeper (2001). He is currently the John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester, where his colleagues include Patricia Duncker and Martin Amis. / Professor Eagleton recently featured in the national media after his critical observations about Martin Amis - included in the introduction to the 2007 edition of his book Ideology - were printed in the press. He asserted that Amis had learnt more from his father Kingsley- “a racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals” - than merely “how to turn a shapely phrase.” Amis responded with an open letter in the press, saying Professor Eagleton was “unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx”. / Professor Eagleton will visit the Scarborough Campus on April 30 [2008] to give his lecture entitled The Death of Criticism? The lecture will consider some traditional functions of criticism, and the crisis in which they currently find themselves.
Erratum: Eagleton’s review of Fergal Keane, A Stranger’s Eye (Penguin 2000), 217pp., in The Irish Times [Weekend] (27 May 2000), gives an account of the reporter’s career but ascribes to him as a previous work Many Young Men of Twenty Said Goodbye, actually a play with music by John B. Keane (Dublin: Progress House 1961, 46pp.), afterwards issued in a recorded version by Michael O’Duffy (Mills Recording 1965).
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