“Even in the act of fleeing modern ideologies, however, literary theory reveals its often unconscious complicity with them, betraying its elitism, sexism… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“There is, in fact, no need to drag politics into literary theory: as with South African sport, it has been there from… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
What was needed was a literary theory which, while preserving the formalist bent of New Criticism, its dogged attention to literature as… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“[B]y reinterpreting Freudianism in terms of language, a pre-eminently social activity, Lacan permits us to explore the relations between the unconscious and… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
To claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at parties. Being a virtuous human being takes… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“What it means to be a ‘better person’, then, must be concrete and practical — that is to say, concerned with people’s political situations… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“What we consume now is not objects or events, but our experience of them. Just as we never need to leave our cars, so… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
“The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to… — Terry Eagleton Copy Share Image
