The Function of Criticism: From the Spectator to Post-Structuralism: 3 (Verso Classics) - Softcover

Eagleton, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859841511 ISBN 13: 9781859841518

Publisher: Verso Books, 1996

Synopsis

This is a brief history and critique of the "critical institution" itself, from Addison and Steele to Barthes and Derrida. The book raises crucial questions about the relations between language, literature and politics. How is it possible that modern criticism, which was born of the struggle against the absolutist state, could be reduced to its current status as part of the public relations branch of the literary industry? How is it that forms of criticism generated in the vibrant context of the 18th-century "public sphere" - of clubs, journals, coffee houses, periodicals - and which embraced free and open discussion of cultural, political and economic questions could degenerate into post-structuralist exercises carried out by academic literary specialists who revel in their own practical impotence? Exercised by these issues, Terry Eagleton - Britain's foremost Marxist critic - traces the birth of criticism in Englightenment England, and its subsequent mutations over time under the pressures of the development of capitalism, the rise of a "counter-public" from below, and the specialization of the intellectual division of labour. In this survey of the last 200 years of cultural criticism, spanning from Joseph Addison, Richard Steele and Samuel Johnson to Matthew Arnold, Leslie Stephen and F.R. Leavis, the book places the modern trends of New Criticism, structuralism and deconstruction in a social and historical perspective. However, Eagleton also makes a case for contemporary criticism to rediscover its original function by reconnecting the cultural and the political, discourse and practice, and thereby to play a role in radical social transformations. Terry Eagleton is the author of "Ideology" "Against the Grain", "Walter Benjamin" and "Criticism and Ideology".

About this title

Review

"Eagleton is second to none among cultural critics writing in the English language today."--"Guardian""Eagleton is a combative, fiercely articulate and witty Marxist literary critic."--"The Nation"

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1859841511
• ISBN 13: 9781859841518
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 134