Literary Theory: An Introduction Summary
Terry Eagleton

Literary Theory: An Introduction Summary

Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction is a critical overview of the history of literary theory starting just before the emergence of the Romantic movement in eighteenth-century England and ending with the post-Structuralists in 1970s and 1980s. Through this historical approach, Eagleton explores the questions "What is literature?" and "What is literary theory?" After undermining the answers various schools of thought give to this answer, he concludes that literature is simply a social construct and literary theory, therefore, is an artificial discipline.

Eagleton begins the book by raising the difficulty of defining literature and, therefore, of defining literary theory. After supplying a few provisional solutions that all fail, he concludes that literature is an unstable category which varies greatly according to social, political, and cultural circumstances. As a result of its close connection with social and political factors, literature is intimately connected with the persistence, or... View more of the Literary Theory: An Introduction Summary