The Event of Literature

by Terry Eagleton

264 Pages, 5.50 x 8.25 in

Paperback
9780300194135
Published: Tuesday, 16 Jul 2013

$17.00

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9780300182590
Published: Tuesday, 29 May 2012

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A renowned literary theorist reconsiders previous stances and offers his latest thinking on the nature of literature and literary study

In this characteristically concise, witty, and lucid book, Terry Eagleton turns his attention to the questions we should ask about literature, but rarely do. What is literature? Can we even speak of "literature" at all? What do different literary theories tell us about what texts mean and do? In throwing new light on these and other questions he has raised in previous best-sellers, Eagleton offers a new theory of what we mean by literature. He also shows what it is that a great many different literary theories have in common.

In a highly unusual combination of critical theory and analytic philosophy, the author sees all literary work, from novels to poems, as a strategy to contain a reality that seeks to thwart that containment, and in doing so throws up new problems that the work tries to resolve. The "event" of literature, Eagleton argues, consists in this continual transformative encounter, unique and endlessly repeatable. Freewheeling through centuries of critical ideas, he sheds light on the place of literature in our culture, and in doing so reaffirms the value and validity of literary thought today.

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished Professor of English Literature, University of Lancaster, UK, and Excellence in English Distinguished Visitor, University of Notre Dame, IN.

“Written with his characteristic wit, verve and insight, The Event of Literature marks a new chapter in the developing thought of our pre-eminent literary theorist.”—London Review of Books
~London Review of Books

“In this book Eagleton offers a shrewd historical synthesis of the interaction between literature and the common culture.”—Iain Finlayson, The Times
~Iain Finlayson, The Times

"In wry, thrifty prose, [Eagleton] surveys a range of theoretical positions in order to ponder a larger question about 'whether there really are such things as common natures in the world.' . . . A fascinating and often compelling expansion of Eagleton's oeuvre."—Publishers Weekly
~Publishers Weekly

“Throughout the book, Eagleton writes with his customary felicity (his aphorism, for example, on significant affinities in Wittgenstein’s theory of family resemblances, ‘a tortoise resembles orthopaedic surgery in that neither can ride a bicycle’, is a delight).”—Stuart Kelly, The Guardian
~Stuart Kelly, The Guardian

The Event of Literature

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