Terry Eagleton— One of the things we mean by calling a piece of writing ‘literary’ is that it is not tied to a specific context. It is true that all literary works arise from particular conditions. Jane Austen’s novels spring from the world of the English landed gentry of the
Fifty years ago, Terry Eagleton—one of the foremost and polemical cultural critics and literary theorists—was appointed Fellow in English at Jesus College, Cambridge shortly after graduating from the university himself with a First in English. He was the youngest fellow in the history of the college since the eighteenth century,
Attention students who have gotten their summer reading assignments and probably haven’t thought about cracking them open yet, read this first. In How to Read Literature, Terry Eagleton helps readers deepen their experience by asking seemingly obvious questions, and pointing out which questions we don’t ask of the books we