Near the end of this excellent book Terry Eagleton admits that his sub-title: ‘An Introduction’ perhaps misses the point and that ‘An Obituary’ might more accurately reflect its central concern. The point is well taken; for what is being argued here is that any simple notion of ‘English Literature’, either as a body of ‘great texts’ or as the basis for a method of critical enquiry, is simply untenable.

First, the question is asked, what is Literature? Is it fiction rather than fact? In that case what happens to chronicle, argument or memoir? Moreover, Eagleton shows that: “if “literature includes much “factual” writing, it also excludes quite a lot of fiction. Superman comic and Mills and Boon novels are fictional but not generally regarded as literature, and certainly not as Literature. If literature is “creative” or “imaginative” writing does this imply that history, philosophy and natural science are uncreative and unimaginative? Early on then, the self evident concept of ‘literature’ is dismissed as an illusion and the practice of ‘literary criticism’, being grounded on an illusion, is similarly dismissed as being a non-subject the many varieties of literary criticism and theory having more in common with other disciplines: linguistics, history, sociology than they have with each other.

But where does that leave us?

In a word it leaves us with politics, and with the conclusion that any consideration of literature is inevitably and inescapably political: ‘Literature does not exist in the sense that insects do, and the value judgements by which it is constituted are historically variable, but these value-judgements themselves have a close relation to social ideologies. They refer in the end not simply to private taste, but to the assumptions by which certain groups exercise and maintain power over others.

This central argument is then impressively developed by a series of chapters which amount to a whistle-stop tour of twentieth century thinking about literature. The pace is rapid but there is a lot to see and enjoythroughout the tone is light and refreshingly humourous. We begin with the rise of ‘English’ as a subject in Britain and with the formative ideas of Arnold, Eliot, Richards, Leavis and others. Then a brief transatlantic detour to glimpse at the American theorists of ‘New Criticism’, before returning to the European schools of phenomenology and reception theory associated with the names of Heidegger, Gadamer and Iser. We move swiftly into structuralism and semiotics with Levi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson and friends; before coming to a halt with the poststructuralist views of Derrida and the ‘Yale Group’ of deconstructionists. A further, overarching chapter on the significance of psychoanalysis-Freud in ten pages!-completes the trip.

Considering the ground that is covered, it is amazing that the whole enterprise doesn’t just collapse into one of those arid exam crammers, ‘Key Points on Key Thinkers’, or a kind of up-market ‘Modern Masters’ for zippy undergrads. But it doesn’t. Against all the odds, it manages to hold itself together, large because of Eagleton’s insistent political perspective.

The various threads of argument are drawn together convincingly in a magnificent concluding chapter. In what amounts to a powerful and, at times, passionately sustained plea for an openly committed, politically informed response to literature, Eagleton demonstrates that even if we wanted to, we cannot ever escape from the real world of human suffering and striving.

‘Every literary theory presupposes a certain use of literature, even if what you get out of it is its utter uselessness. Liberal humanist criticism is not wrong to use literature, but wrong to deceive itself that it does not. It uses it to further certain moral values, which as I hope to have shown are in fact indissociable from certain ideological ones, and in the end imply a particular form of politics… The idea that there are “non-political” forms of criticism is simply a myth which furthers certain political uses of literature all the more effectively.

‘The difference between a “political” and “non-political” criticism is just the difference between the prime minister and the monarch: the latter furthers certain political ends by pretending not to, while the former makes no bones about it. It is always better to be honest in these matters… There is no way of settling the question of which politics is preferable in literary critical terms. You simply have to argue about politics. It is not a question of debating whether “literature” should be related to “history”‘or not: it is a question of different readings of history itself.’

This is an important argument with implications not just for students and teachers of ‘literature’, but for any socialist who has ever opened and enjoyed a book.