Critical Revolutionaries: Five Critics Who Changed the Way We Read

336 Pages·2022·0.9 MB·english

by  Terry Eagleton

Terry Eagleton is Distinguished A celebration of an extraordinary
‘Here are five expert pen portraits of the founding fathers
Visiting Professor of English Literature of modern English literary criticism. Eagleton evokes their generation who transformed the
at Lancaster University, and the author
personalities and teases out their thought with all his study of literature
of more than fifty books in the fields of
characteristic judiciousness, asperity and wit.’
literary theory, postmodernism, politics,
Professor Seamus Perry, University of Oxford Before the First World War, traditional
ideology and religion.
literary scholarship was isolated from
‘That these influential critics have been on the verge society at large. Then a younger
of neglect goes without saying. Now Eagleton rescues them, generation of critics came to the fore.
noting their individual failures while celebrating their Their work represented a reaction to
revolutionary brilliance. These critics still matter as we think the impoverishment of language in
about how a culture is formed and extended, valued and a commercial, utilitarian society
preserved. This book deserves a very wide audience.’ increasingly under the sway of film,
Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me FIVE advertising, and the popular press. For
CRITICS them, literary criticism was not just
‘A presentation of key critics who taught us that reading WHO a way of diagnosing social ills: it had
is both a technical skill and a vital human concern. Essential a vital moral function to perform.
CHANGED
for those who want to understand why we still need
THE WAY
literature in the days of Twitter and Instagram.’ Terry Eagleton explores the lives and
WE READ
Professor Maria Elisa Cevasco, University of São Paulo work of T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, William
Empson, F.R. Leavis and Raymond
‘Eagleton offers a stimulating introduction to those Williams, and traces a vital tradition
approaching the criticism of T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards, of literary criticism that today is in
William Empson, F.R. Leavis and Raymond Williams, danger of being neglected. This was
while making a forceful contribution to the critical the heyday of literary modernism,
tradition being constructed and analysed.’ a period of change and experimentation –
Professor Daniel G. Williams, Swansea University the bravura of which spurred on
developments in critical theory. These
five critics rank among the most
original and influential of modern
times, and represent one of the most
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
remarkable intellectual formations in
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Cover design & illustration: David Wardle Seamus Perry
CRITICAL REVOLUTIONARIES
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CRITICAL
REVOLUTIONARIES
FIVE CRITICS WHO CHANGED THE WAY WE READ
TERRY EAGLETON
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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For Tony Pinkney
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CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1 T.S. Eliot 12
2 I.A. Richards 80
3 William Empson 142
4 F.R. Leavis 195
5 Raymond Williams 257
Notes 309
Index 317
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INTRODUCTION
The conviction underlying this book is that a vital tradition of
literary criticism is in danger of being neglected. This is so to some
extent even in academia, as well as in the wider literary world. If not
many students of literature today are likely to be familiar with the
work of, say, I.A. Richards or Raymond Williams, the same may
well be true of some of their teachers. Yet the five critics discussed
in this book rank among the most original and influential of modern
times, which is why I have chosen them.
They also represent a specific intellectual formation, one of the
most remarkable in twentieth-century Britain. All but one of them
taught at the University of Cambridge. The exception is T.S. Eliot, yet
Eliot had close connections with Cambridge, not least through his
friend I.A. Richards, and as an informal consultant was a powerful
influence on the shaping of English studies there. These men were
part of what has been hailed as a critical revolution, one that trans-
formed the academic study of literature and lent it a fresh centrality in
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