Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd edition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

When its first edition was published in 1983, this book had a large impact on an audience starved, apparently, for an accessible introduction to then-new developments in literary criticism and theory. Its robust sales and the plethora of praise it received from a wide range of sources (from The New York Times Book Review to The Nation) attest to the power of Eagleton’s story about literary theory and to the skill and persuasiveness with which he told that story. I recall reading the book rather excitedly in 1985 or 1986; it seemed to augur strange, semicomprehensible mysteries into which I longed to be more fully initiated when I got to graduate school. Having just used the second edition of Eagleton’s book to help teach my own graduate-level course on contemporary literary theory, however, I found myself reading the book with a more sober eye. It is not just that I am a (somewhat) less excitable reader than I was on the eve of graduate school. Rather, the nature, scope, and aims of critico-theoreti- cal discourse have changed drastically since the time Derridean deconstruction or Lacanian psychoanalysis seemed too esoteric to understand, let alone teach.