Life
1943- ; b. Salford, nr. Manchester; son of factory worker who won a Grammar School place but could not afford to take it up; claims Irish descent from Galway family moved to Manchester; one of five siblings; ed. Carmelite Convent and later De La Salle Grammar School; went up to Cambridge; studied under Raymond Williams; assisted
Fr. Laurence Bright (Dominican) in founding the leftist Catholic journal Slant; research fellow at Jesus College before moving to Oxford in 1969, and afterwards Wharton Professor of English Literature,
St Catherine’s College, Oxford; issued Criticism and Ideology (1976), Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), and other works considered as the inspiration of Anglophone theory studies; visiting professor at Brigham Young University and the University of Notre Dame; appt. Professor of
Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester, 2001; Irish writings
incl. Saints and Scholars, a novel; and plays, St. Oscar (Guildhall, 25 Sept. 1989), featuring Wilde’s deconstruction of Victorian stereotypes of race and gender; The White, the Gold, and the Gangrene, play set in cell of James Connolly before execution, performed by Dubblejoint (An Chultúrlann, W. Belfast, March 1993), and later broadcast on BBC3; God’s Locusts (BBC 1995), a play about famine; also Disappearances [q.d.]; lectured on “Literary Exiles and Emigres” at Parnell Summer School, Wicklow, 1996; issued The Truth about the Irish (New Island Press 1999), a cultural squib; literary criticism incl. Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (1995) and Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-century Ireland (2000), Sweet Violence (2002); also After Theory (2003).
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Criticism and Ideology (London: New Left Books 1976), in US as Marxism and Literary Criticism (California UP 1976); Walter Benjamin, or Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (London: Verso 1980); Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minnesota UP 1983); Nationalism: Irony and Commitment [Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature, No. 13] (Derry: Field Day 1988), 17pp., rep. in by Seamus Deane, ed., Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature [Field Day] (Minnesota UP 1990), pp.23-39 [with others by Fredric Jameson and Edward W. Said]; ‘Politics and Sexuality in W. B. Yeats’, in The Crane Bag, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1985), pp.138-42; ’Emily Brönte and the Great Hunger’, in Irish Review, No. 12 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp.108-119; ‘Aesthetics and Politics in Edmund Burke’, in Michael Kenneally, ed, Irish Literature and Culture [CAIS Conf., Marianopolis 1988] Irish Literary Studies No. 35] (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1992), pp.25-34; ‘Modernism, Myth and Mononpoly Capitalism’, in News from Nowhere, No. 7 (Winter 1989), pp.191-24; ‘A Postmodernist Punch’, Irish Studies Review, No. 6 (Spring 1994), pp.2-3; ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1994), pp.17-26; rep. as ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46 [also as a chapter in Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, 1995]; The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1990); Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso 1995), 367pp.; ‘Staging the Famine’, in Irish Reporter (Third Quarter 1995), pp.12-13; ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46; Marx and Freedom (London: Phoenix 1997), 57pp.; ‘The Ideology of Irish Studies’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp.5-14, prev. given at Desmond Greaves Summer School (1996); ‘Nationalism, Irony and Commitment’ (in Seamus Deane, ed., Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature, Minnesota UP 1990); ‘The Ideology of Irish Studies’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp.5-14.Crazy Jane and the Bishop and Other Essays on Irish Culture [Critical Conditions Ser.] (Cork UP 1998), 355pp.; Stephen Reagan, ed., The Eagleton Reader (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1998) [incl. ‘Deconstruction and Human Rights’]; The Truth about the Irish (New Island Press 1999), 181pp.; Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-century Ireland (Oxford Basil Blackwell 2000), 177pp.; The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 2000), 168pp.; Sweet Violence: A Study of the Tragic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 2002), 320pp.; After Theory (London: Allen Lane 2003), 225pp.
Drama
Saints and Scholars (Futura 1990); St. Oscar and Other Plays (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1997), 256[225]pp.; also “Members”, extract from a play about Edward Martyn, in The Dublin Review, ed. Brendan Barrington [new ser.], No. 1 (Winter 2000-01).
Autobiography
The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press 2001), 178pp.
Miscellaneous
‘F. R Leavis’ [revaluation], in The European English Messenger, VII, 2 (Autumn 1998), pp.49-51; ‘The broken lives of Blairite Britain’, review of Fergal Keane, A Stranger’s Eye, in The Irish Times (27 May 2000) [Weekend]; Truth is tamer than fiction’, review of Peter Gay, Savage Reprisals, in The Irish Times ( 21 Sept. 2002); Review of M. J. Devaney, “Since at Least Plato [...]” and Other Postmodernist Myths (London: Macmillan 1997, in Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 1998, p.8; Terry Eagleton writes about the inherent difficulties of portraying in art works events as cataclysmic as the Great Famine’, Irish Reporter, 19, (3rd Quarter 1995), pp.12-13. The same issued contains an appreciative review of Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, Studies in Irish Culture, written by Sean Ryder (p.30); Review of Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity and its Discontents (Oxford: Policy 1997), 221pp., in Times Literary Supplement (23 May 1997), p.22; Writer’s Book Choice, Times Literary Supplement (1 December 2000); Terry Eagleton, letter in Times Literary Supplement (30 June 2000), addresses ‘Kevin Barry’s review of Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland [TLS June 2]Review of Arthur Mathews, Well-Remembered Days (Macmillan), in The Irish Times (3 March 2001); ‘Sweetness and Light for All: Matthew Arnold and the search for a common moral ground to replace religion’, contrib. to “Refreshing Giants”, [ser.; No. III], 21, Times Literary Supplement Jan. 2000, pp.14-15; ‘The broken lives of Blairite Britain’, review of A Stranger’s Eye by Fergal Keane, in The Irish Times (27 May 2000); ‘Pedants and Partisans’, in The Guardian ( 22 Feb. 2003); Review of Curtis White, The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think For Themselves, in The Irish Times (20 March 2004); Poem is apparently in response to Seamus Heaney’s “Beacon at Bealtaine”, delivered at the EU enlargement ceremony in Phoenix Park, Dublin (see The Irish Times, 3 May 2004.)
See further reviews and comments in EIRData on Roy Foster [infra], Denis Donoghue [infra], Father Prout [infra], Oscar Wilde [infra], and Jonathan Swift [infra].
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Criticism
Martin McQuillan, ‘Irish Eagleton: of Ontological Imperialism
and Colonial Mimicry’, in Irish Studies Review, 10, 1 (April
2002), pp.29-38.
John Waters, ‘Challenge to liberal agenda cannot be dismissed’, in The Irish Times (3 Sept. 1996) [see infra].
John Mullan, ‘What Terry did next ...’, review of After Theory, in The Guardian ( 29 Nov. 2003) [infra].
Christine Patterson, ’Terry Eagleton: Culture and society: The man who ’sexed up’ literary theory believes that postmodernism is dead.
Christina Patterson, interview, Independent [UK] (27 Sept. 2003) [Entertainment].
Dinitia Smith, ‘Cultural Theorists, Start Your Epitaphs’, in NY Times (3 Jan. 2004). Also sundry critics as Commentary [ infra].
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern
Speak?’ (1988), in C. Nelson & L. Grossberg, eds., Marxism
and the Interpretation of Culture, Macmillan 1988, pp.271-313; quoting
Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Minnesota UP, 1983,
p.205.)
Seamus Heaney, ‘Speranza in Reading: On “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”’, in The Redress of Poetry [Oxford Poetry Lectures] (London: Faber & Faber 1995), pp.86-87.
Dick Walsh, columnist, in The Irish Times (7 Sept. 1996).
Denis Donoghue, review of Heathcliff […&c], in The New Republic (21 & 28 Aug. 1995). Note that Eagleton reviews Donoghue’s The Practice of Reading in TLS, 29 Jan. 1999.
Seamus Deane, review of Heathcliff and Hunger, in London Review of Books [q.d.], p.28 Also Notes & Queries, Vol. 240, No. 42 (Sept. 1995), pp.178-79
Chris Morash, ‘Eagleton’s Angel of History’, review of Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture (London: Verso 1995), in Irish Literary Supplement (Spring 1996), p.16..
Steven Pole, review of Saint Oscar and Other Plays, in Tiems Literary Supplement (4 July 1997), p.19.
Rory Brennan, review of Crazy John and the Bishop (1998), (Books Ireland, 1998.
Proinsias Ó Drisceoil, review of Crazy Jane and the Bishop , in The Irish Times (21 Oct. 1998).
Brendan Glacken, ‘The Sisters of Murphy’, news feature in The Irish Times (28 Oct. 1998 ).
Gerry Smyth, ‘Irish Studies, Postcolonial Theory and the “New” Essentialism’, in Irish Studies Review, vol. 7, No. 2, p.216.
Kevin Barry, review of Terry Eagleton, Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-century Ireland (Blackwell), in Times Literary Supplement (2 June 2000), p.8.
David Lloyd, ‘When cultures clash’, review of The Idea of Culture, in The Irish Times (Sat. 6 May 2000).
Robert Tobin, reviewing of Terry Eagleton, The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (Allen Lane), in The Irish Times (24 Nov. 2001), p.9.
Martin McQuillan, ‘Irish Eagleton: of Ontological Imperialism and Colonial Mimicry’, in Irish Studies Review, 10, 1 (April 2002), pp.29-38.
Christina Patterson talks to Terry Eagleton about love, sex, God - and the global crisis’, Independent [UK] (27 Sept. 2003).
John Mullan, ‘What Terry did next ...’, review of After Theory, in The Guardian ( 29 Nov. 2003).
Terence Killeen, reporting on the James Joyce Symposium, Dublin (2002), The Irish Times, 1 July 2002.
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Notes
Disappearances [q.d.], a play about a Third World poet who
becomes a literary star in the English-speaking world, and is caught up
in revolutionary turmoil at home when a fellow-expatriate, Raan, tries
to persuade him to take office as Prime Minister leading to the threatened
academic black-listing of his dg. by the Foreign Office.
A two-day conference, “Understanding Class in Ireland”, at 11 a.m [11 Dec. 1999], in Arts Block, UCD; speakers include Prof Erik Olin Wright, an authority on class structure in the US, Prof Terry Eagleton of Oxford University, Prof Kathleen Lynch (UCD), and Prof Christopher Whelan of the Economic and Social Research Institute. (Irish Times Notice, 11 Dec. 1999.)
‘Terry Eagleton, Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester will deliver a Master Class to IRCHSS Post-Graduate Scholars and Post-Doctoral Fellows at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, on 14 November 2003. Professor Eagleton’s seminar is titled “Irish Studies: The Resistance to Reason”. Professor Eagleton who began his academic career as a Victorianist, is a specialist in literary and cultural theory. He is also particularly interested in the English-language literature and culture of Ireland. [...]’ (See Irish Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences website/Current News, Sept. 2003.)
The Gatekeeper (2001) takes its title from its author’s duties as an altar boy at a Carmelite convent. After young nuns took their vows, they said goodbye to their parents forever. He escorted grieving parents who were never to see their daughters again, out the door. (See Dinitia Smith, ‘Cultural Theorists, Start Your Epitaphs’, in NY Times, 3 Jan. 2004.)
COPAC lists The New Left Church: Essays (1966); Shakespeare and society: Critical Studies in Shakespearean drama (1967, 1970); ed., with Brian Wicker, From culture to revolution: The Slant Symposium, 1967 (1968); Directions: pointers for the post-conciliar Church (1968); The body as language: outline of a ’new left’ theology (1970); The body as language: outline of a ’new left’ theology (1970); Exiles and émigrés: studies in modern literature, 1943- (1970); Exiles and émigrés: studies in modern literature (1970); Jude the obscure introduced by Terry Eagleton [notes by P.N. Furbank] (1975); Myths of power: a Marxist study of the Brontë (1975, 1988); Marxism and literary critism (1977); Criticism and ideology: a study in Marxist literary theory (1978); Criticism and ideology: a study of Marxist literary theory (1976, 1978, 1998); Walter Benjamin, or, Towards a revolutionary criticism (1981); The rape of Clarissa: writing, sexuality and class struggle in Samuel Richardson (1982, 1989); Literary theory: an introduction (1983, 1996); The function of criticism: from The Spectator to post-structuralism (1984, 1996);The end of English (1986); Against the grain: essays (1975-1985 (1986); Saints and scholars: A Novel (1987, 1990); William Shakespeare (Blackwell 1986), 186pp.; Nationalism, colonialism and literature: nationalism: irony and commitment (Field Day 1988); Einführung in die Literaturtheorie (1988, 1997); Raymond Williams: critical perspectives (Cambridge: Polity 1989), ix, 235pp.+10pp. of pls.; The significance of theory (1989, 1990); Saint Oscar: A Play (1989), rep. in Saint Oscar, and other plays (1997); The ideology of the aesthetic (1990); with F. Jameson, E.W. Said, Nationalism, colonialism, and literature (1990) [Field Day Pamphs.]; Ideology: an introduction (1991, 1994); ed., Plays, prose writings and poems of Oscar Wilde 1854-1900 (1991);The crisis of contemporary culture [An inaugural lecture delivered before the University of Oxford on 27 November 1992 (1993); Heathcliff and the great hunger: studies in Irish culture (1995); ed., with Drew Milne, Marxist literary theory: a reader (1996); Marx and freedom (1997); The illusions of postmodernism (1997); The Eagleton reader (1998); Crazy John and the bishop and other essays on Irish culture (1998); The truth about the Irish (1999); Scholars and rebels in nineteenth-century Ireland (Blackwell 1999), 177pp.;The idea of culture (2000); contrib. to Julie Scanlon and Amy Waste, eds., Crossing boundaries: thinking through literature (2001);The gatekeeper: a memoir (2001). FILM: Raymond Williams: A tribute (1988) [video of discussion]; Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton script; the Derek Jarman Film (London: British Film Inst. 1993), 151pp.; Wittgenstein [video-cass.] (Connoisseur 1990; British Film Inst., 1993) [75 mins.]
London Review of Books lists numerous articles by Eagleton accessible through the Search engine at their website [link], e.g., ‘Pork Chops and Pineapples’, review of Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis [rep. edn.], in LRB, Vol. 25, No. 20 23 Oct.2003.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)