Culture
TERRY EAGLETON

Terry Eagleton’s readers are the grateful beneficiaries of what might be called “The Eagleton Paradox”. On the one hand he has mastered the field of literary theory and squeezed the last drip of dullness out of even the most deadening Marxist or theoretical tract. On the other hand he writes with an irrepressible zest and humour that makes the pages fly past in a sparkling display of erudition, wit and, most important of all, fearlessly independent judgement. Some of the liveliest pages in Culture are on Oscar Wilde, that urbane subversive, who sounds here like an Eagleton avant la lettre. As with his hero, Eagleton’s fun is always in the service of the utmost seriousness: behind the intellectual high jinks (there are some great gags in this book) there is a solid substance.

Eagleton has not set out to articulate a grand theory of culture, rather he has sought to come at it from a number of suggestive angles. He reviews the various meanings that have been given to the slippery concept of “culture”, makes a stimulating distinction between culture and civilisation, and then gets down to what he is really good at: running his lance through the received opinions of the cultural theorists and polemicists, amongst whom he might have once found himself.