Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton
Terence Francis "Terry" Eagleton FBA is a prominent British literary theorist, critic and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth22 February 1943
literary-theory literary-genre practice
What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as aesthetic object rather than social practice, would make something a good deal more systematic and 'scientific' out of all this. The answer arrived in 1957, in the shape of the Canadian Northrop Fryes mighty 'totalization' of all literary genres, Anatomy of Criticism .
reading understanding movement
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.
derrida
When one emphasizes, as Jacques Derrida once remarked, one always overemphasizes.
humanity bows insolence
There seems to be something in humanity which will not bow meekly to the insolence of power.
catholic taught backgrounds
I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.
men past trying
Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.
strong world shame
God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong.
scratches savages
Scratch a schoolboy and you find a savage.
all-the-best radical position
Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.
believe earth sun
It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.
class working-class capitalism
Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.
believe government cabinets
The government spokesman announces that there is no truth in the charges of widespread corruption within the Cabinet; nobody believes him; he knows that nobody believes him, we know that he knows it, and he knows it too.
self superstitions improvement
An enlightened trust in the sovereignty of human reason can be every bit as magical as the exploits of Merlin, and a faith in our capacity for limitless self-improvement just as much a wide-eyed superstition as a faith in leprechauns.
long actors lines
You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!