Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985 - Softcover

Eagleton, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0860918416 ISBN 13: 9780860918417

Publisher: Verso Books, 1986

Synopsis

These essays (and a ballad) have their origins in Terry Eagleton's continuing engagement with the possibilities of a literary criticism that is both materialist and open to diverse currents of thought in the human sciences. Eagleton's combative intelligence here explores the encounter between Marxism and contemporary European and American literary theory. Included are a survey of the Althusserian contribution to literary analysis; thoughts on the fraught relations between Marxism and poststructuralism; and a brilliant evocation of the affinities and tensions between Wittgenstein, Derrida and Bakhtin. Intellectual figures in this wide-ranging topography include Jacques Derrida; the radical critic Fredric Jameson; the apostle of deconstruction, Paul de Man; the liberal humanist John Bayley; Bertoit Brecht; William Empson and Pierre Machersy. The volume also includes Eagleton's brilliant reading of Conrad's The Secret Agent. Against the Grain is an excellent introduction to the range of Terry Eagleton's thought and his considerable body of work. It is also a useful primer for all readers interested in the vitality of literary theory today.

About this title

About the Author:

Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow, University of Manchester. His other books include Ideology; The Function of Criticism; Heathcliff and the Great Hunger; Against the Grain; Walter Benjamin; and Criticism and Ideology, all from Verso.

Synopsis:

Essays discuss Wittgenstein, Brecht, Conrad, Marxist literary theory, structuralism, modernism, and poetry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0860918416
• ISBN 13: 9780860918417
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 210