A clear-sighted and entertaining defence of literary realism, and an account of its key practitioners. Realist fiction is one of the most enduring artforms history has ever witnessed. By describing the intricate inner life of its characters, or wid...

Terry Eagleton looks back across sixty years to an extraordinary critical milieu that transformed the study of literature. Before the First World War, traditional literary scholarship was isolated from society at large. In the years following, a you...

One of our most brilliant minds offers a sweeping intellectual history that argues for the reclamation of culture's value. Culture is a defining aspect of what it means to be human. Defining culture and pinpointing its role in our lives is not, howe...

Written by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature of humour and the functions it serves. Why do we laugh? What are we to make of the sheer variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is hum...

In this compelling account, eminent literary critic Terry Eagleton explores the nuances of tragedy in Western culture – from literature and politics to philosophy and theater. Eagleton covers a vast array of thinkers and practitioners, including Niet...

The modern conception of sacrifice is at once cast as a victory of self-discipline over desire and condescended to as destructive and archaic abnegation. But even in the Old Testament, the dual natures of sacrifice, embodying both ritual slaughter an...

In a virtuoso display of erudition, thoughtfulness and humour, Terry Eagleton teases apart the concept of hope as it has been (often mistakenly) conceptualised over six millennia, from ancient Greece to today. He distinguishes hope from simple optimi...

A literary master's entertaining guide to reading with deeper insight, better understanding, and greater pleasure What makes a work of literature good or bad? How freely can the reader interpret it? Could a nursery rhyme like Baa Baa Black Sheep be f...

In this eye-opening, intellectually stimulating appreciation of a fascinating school of philosophy, Terry Eagleton makes a powerful argument that materialism is at the center of today's important scientific and cultural as well as philosophical debat...

In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism – that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the econo...