Eagleton, Terry (1943—)
Marxist cultural critic. The son of a working-class family of Irish descent, Eagleton was born in Salford in the north-west of England. He was educated at De La Salle College and Cambridge University, where he came under the influence of Williams, Raymond. He is best known for his witty, combative and indeed sniping reviewing style. His Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983) introduced an entire generation of Anglophone literature students to theory. He achieved proper notoriety when the Prince of Wales decried him to a group of Oxford students as ‘that dreadful Terry Eagleton’. When Eagleton gained admission to Trinity College, Cambridge to read English in 1961, it coincided with the high point of the influence of the doyen of Practical Criticism, James, C. L. R., and though he would later write scathingly of both, practical criticism’s combative tone and its emphasis on close reading left its mark. However, the greater personal and intellectual influences were the Dominican theologians Laurence Bright and Herbert McCabe and cultural critic Raymond Williams, whom he encountered at Jesus College, where he moved to undertake his postgraduate research. Eagleton’s PhD, written under the direction of Williams, examined the work of the minor Victorian poet and writer Edward Carpenter. In his student years, Eagleton was heavily involved with the Catholic Left. He was one of the founding editors of Slant, a radical Catholic journal which sought to challenge the structures of the Catholic Church in the wake of Vatican II and bring a distinctly Christian perspective to debates central to the concerns of the New Left. He also wrote two book-length treatments of this subject in this period, The New Left Church (1967) and The Body as Language (1970). Through his publications in Slant as well as in New Blackfriars (the Catholic theological journal), Eagleton sought to demonstrate common ground between Christian thought and socialism and between religion and politics more generally. Christ, he proposed, offered a way out of the existential angst caused by the alienating forces of modern life. Eagleton left Cambridge in 1969 to take up a position at Oxford, where he remained for three decades. He then moved to Manchester University which caused a scandal by imposing mandatory retirement on him when he reached 65. The publication in 1976 of Criticism and Ideology brought international attention to Eagleton, and established him as one of Britain’s leading Marxist critics. This was followed in quick succession by Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976), a study of Benjamin, Walter and an introductory textbook on literary theory. He also wrote regularly for New Left Review. During this period, Eagleton’s work was distinguished by two main preoccupations: Irish literature and history and postmodernism. Equally outspoken about both, in Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1995) he showed himself to be one of the staunchest champions of Irish literature and in The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996) one of the sternest critics of postmodernism. Since leaving Oxford Eagleton has also settled accounts with theory in After Theory (2001) and made a pronounced turn toward spiritual matters, going so far as to write a book entitled The Meaning of Life (2007). But he hasn’t deserted politics altogether. In 2002 he published perhaps his most controversial book of all, Holy Terror, which in the aftermath of 9/11 infuriated right-wing critics by (bravely, it has to be said) highlighting the connection between terrorism and state terror. He made international news in 2006 when the Australian Archbishop was accused of plagiarizing his review of Richard Dawkins’s polemical book The God Delusion (2006). Showing that advancing age has not dulled his spirit or wit, Eagleton caused a highly public stir in 2007 by deriding Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis for their conservatism. Further Reading: D. Alderson Terry Eagleton (2004). J. Smith Terry Eagleton: A Critical Introduction (2008).