Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis "Terry" Eagleton FBA is a prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth22 February 1943
moving writing past
If history moves forward, knowledge of it travels backwards, so that in writing of our own recent past we are continually meeting ourselves coming the other way.
school literary-theory facts
I do not know whether to be delighted or outraged by the fact that Literary Theory: An Introduction was the subject of a study by a well known U.S. business school, which was intrigued to discover how an academic text could become a best-seller.
ivory-tower culture towers
Ivory towers are as rare as bowling alleys in tribal cultures.
tasks spurs socialism
Capitalism is the sorcerer's apprentice: it has summoned up powers which have spun wildly out of control and now threaten to destroy us.The task of socialism is not to spur on those powers but to bring them under rational human control.
literary-theory may throwing-up
If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.
important ideology critique
It is important to see that, in the critique of ideology, only those interventions will work which make sense to the mystified subject itself.
hangover uprising aftermath
Post-structuralism is among other things a kind of theoretical hangover from the failed uprising of '68, a way of keeping the revolution warm at the level of language, blending the euphoric libertarianism of that moment with the stoical melancholia of its aftermath.
past doe truth-is
The truth is that the past exists no more than the future, even though it feels as though it does.
becoming confirmation theory
The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which this case is becoming truer as time passes.
song evil may
Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.
light have-faith doe
As far as belief goes, postmodernism prefers to travel light: it has beliefs, to be sure, but it does not have faith
everyday speech ordinary
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.
reading necklaces counting
Reading a text is more like tracing this process of constant flickering than it is like counting the beads on a necklace.
struggle heart political
The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.