Terry Eagleton

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Apart from the occasional perfunctory gesture to 'sophisticated' religious believers, Dawkins tends to see religion and fundamentalist religion as one and the same. This is not only grotesquely false; it is also a device to outflank any more reflective kind of faith by implying that it belongs to the coterie and not to the mass. The huge numbers of believers who hold something like the theology I outlined above can thus be conveniently lumped with rednecks who murder abortionists and malign homosexuals.

Terry and Gifford Lectures

In April 2008 Eagleton delivered Yale University's Terry Lectures, with the title Faith and Fundamentalism: Is belief in Richard Dawkins necessary for salvation?, constituting a continuation of the critique he had begun in The London Review of Books. Introducing his first lecture with an admission of ignorance of both theology and science, Eagleton goes on to affirm: "All I can claim in this respect, alas, is that I think I may know just about enough theology to be able to spot when someone like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens – a couplet I shall henceforth reduce for convenience to the solitary signifier Ditchkins – is talking out of the back of his neck." [20] [21] An expanded version of these lectures was published in 2009 as Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. [22]

Football

Eagleton sees football as a new opium of the people distracting ordinary people from more serious, important social concerns. Eagleton is pessimistic as to whether this distraction can be ended:

For the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham. The Reds are no longer the Bolsheviks. Nobody serious about political change can shirk the fact that the game has to be abolished. And any political outfit that tried it on would have about as much chance of power as the chief executive of BP has in taking over from Oprah Winfrey. [23]

Criticism of Martin and Kingsley Amis

Eagleton in 2012 T.Eagleton & Wang Jie.jpg
Eagleton in 2012

In late 2007, a critique of Martin Amis included in the introduction to a 2007 edition of Eagleton's book Ideology was widely reprinted in the British press. In it, Eagleton took issue with Amis' widely quoted writings on "Islamism", directing particular attention to one specific passage from an interview with Ginny Dougary published in The Times on 9 September 2006.

What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say, 'The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.' What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children ... It's a huge dereliction on their part. [24]

Eagleton criticised Amis and expressed surprise as to its source, stating: "[these are] not the ramblings of a British National Party thug ... but the reflections of Martin Amis, leading luminary of the English metropolitan literary world." He drew a connection between Amis and his father (the novelist Kingsley Amis). Eagleton went on to write that Martin Amis had learned more from his father – whom Eagleton described as a reactionary "racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals" – than merely "how to turn a shapely phrase." Eagleton added there was "something rather stomach-churning at the sight of those such as Amis and his political allies, champions of a civilisation that for centuries has wreaked untold carnage throughout the world, shrieking for illegal measures when they find themselves for the first time on the sticky end of the same treatment." [25]

The essay became a cause célèbre in British literary circles. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for The Independent , wrote an article [26] about the affair, to which Amis responded via open letter, calling Eagleton "an ideological relict ... unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx." [27] Amis said the views Eagleton attributed to him as his considered opinion was in fact his spoken description of a tempting urge, in relation to the need to "raise the price" of terrorist actions. Eagleton's personal comments on Kingsley Amis prompted a further response from Kingsley's widow, the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Howard wrote to The Daily Telegraph , noting that for a supposed "anti-semitic homophobe", it was peculiar that the only guests at the Howard–Amis nuptials were either Jewish or gay. [28] As Howard explained, "Kingsley was never a racist, nor an anti-Semitic boor. Our four great friends who witnessed our wedding were three Jews and one homosexual." [29] Colin Howard, Howard's homosexual brother, called Eagleton "a little squirt", adding that Sir Kingsley, far from being homophobic, had extended an affectionate friendship to him and helped him come to terms with his sexuality. [28]

Eagleton defended his comments about Martin and Kingsley Amis in The Guardian , claiming the main bone of contention – the substance of Amis' remarks and views – had been lost amid the media furore. [25]

Critical reactions

William Deresiewicz wrote of After Theory, Eagleton's book, as follows... :

[I]s it that hard to explain what Eagleton's up to? The prolificness, the self-plagiarism, the snappy, highly consumable prose and, of course, the sales figures: Eagleton wishes for capitalism's demise, but as long as it's here, he plans to do as well as he can out of it. Someone who owns three homes shouldn't be preaching self-sacrifice, and someone whose careerism at Oxbridge was legendary shouldn't be telling interviewers of his longstanding regret at having turned down a job at the Open University. [30]

The novelist and critic David Lodge, writing in the May 2004 New York Review of Books on Theory and After Theory, concluded:

Some of Theory's achievements are genuine and permanent additions to knowledge, or intellectual self-knowledge. Eagleton is quite right to assert that we can never go back to a state of pre-Theory innocence about the transparency of language or the ideological neutrality of interpretation ... But like all fashions it was bound to have a limited life of novelty and vitality, and we are now living through its decadence without any clear indication of what will supersede it. Theory has, in short, become boringly predictable to many people who were once enthusiastic about it, and that After Theory is most interesting when its focus is furthest from its nominal subject is perhaps evidence that Terry Eagleton is now bored by it too. [31]

Jonathan Bate stressed the importance of Eagleton's Roman Catholic background in "Saint Terence", a 1991 review-essay in the London Review of Books prior to the overt religious turn in Eagleton's later works. [32]

Personal life

Eagleton has been married twice. His first marriage was to Rosemary Galpin, a nurse; his second marriage was to American academic Willa Murphy. They have since divorced. [33] Eagleton has five children: Dominic Eagleton, Daniel Eagleton, the journalist Oliver Eagleton, [34] Alice Eagleton and Owen Eagleton. His daughter-in-law is theatre director Andrea Ferran. [35]

Publications

Reviews

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 James Smith (2013). Terry Eagleton. Wiley. ISBN   978-0-7456-5795-0.
  2. 1 2 3 4 James Smith (2013). Terry Eagleton. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   978-0-7456-5795-0.
  3. Terry Eagleton (1991). Ideology: An Introduction, p. 131.
  4. 1 2 "Prof Terry Eagleton profile, Debrett's People of Today, FBA Profile". Archived from the original on 24 July 2013.
  5. Vallely, Paul (13 October 2007). "Terry Eagleton: Class warrior". The Independent . ...the man who succeeded F R Leavis as Britain's most influential academic critic.
  6. John Sitter, Chairman of the English Department at the University of Notre Dame and Editor of The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth Century Poetry, has describes Eagleton as "someone widely regarded as the most influential contemporary literary critic and theorist in the English-speaking world" "Terry Eagleton Returns to ND as Distinguished Visitor in English Department // News and Stories // About Arts and Letters // College of Arts and Letters // University of Notre Dame". Archived from the original on 31 August 2009. Retrieved 23 June 2009.
  7. "Eagleton himself has also replaced Leavis as the best known and most influential academic critic in Britain." Duke Maskell,[ who? ] as cited by Nicholas Wroe .
  8. "Terry Eagleton is arguably the most influential contemporary British literary critic and theorist." James Smith. [ who? ] Cited in the Introduction to Terry Eagleton: A Critical Introduction (Key Contemporary Thinkers) Polity Press, 2008.
  9. "A theoretical blow for democracy". 31 May 2001. Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  10. 1 2 University, Lancaster. "Terry Eagleton - English & Creative Writing - Lancaster University - Lancaster University" . Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  11. "Professor Terry Eagleton". College of Humanities & Social Science. University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 21 July 2011.
  12. "Terry Eagleton to speak at Newington Green". Hackney Citizen. 29 August 2010. Retrieved 30 December 2011.
  13. "EAGLETON, Prof. Terence Francis" at Who's Who 2012, A & C Black, 2012; online edn, Oxford University Press, December 2011; online edn November 2011; accessed 23 September 2012.
  14. Andrews, Kernan (18 December 2008). "Terry Eagleton – taking on the capitalists and atheists in Galway". Galway Advertiser.
  15. Smith, James; Smith, James Benjamin (8 July 2008). Terry Eagleton. Polity. p. 8. ISBN   978-0-7456-3609-2. The final break with Oxbridge came in 2001, with a move to the University of Manchester as the John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature, with Eagleton now dividing time between living in England and Ireland.
  16. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester University Press, 2009, p. 273.
  17. LRB archive. But only six contributions from 2014 to 2017.
  18. Eagleton, Terry (19 October 2006). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books . 28 (20). Retrieved 26 November 2006.
  19. Eagleton, Terry (19 October 2006). "Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching". London Review of Books. 28 (20). Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  20. Terry Eagleton (lecturer) (1 April 2008). Christianity Fair and Foul (Podcast). Yale University. Event occurs at 6:23. Archived from the original (rm) on 6 August 2009. Retrieved 4 August 2009.
  21. Eagleton, Terry (April 2008). "Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?". Dwight H. Terry Lectureship . Yale University. Archived from the original on 6 August 2009.
  22. Eagleton, Terry (2009). Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate . New Haven/London: Yale University Press. ISBN   978-0-300-15179-4.
  23. Eagleton, Terry (15 June 2010). "Football: a dear friend to capitalism - Terry Eagleton". TheGuardian.com . Retrieved 29 June 2016.
  24. "The voice of experience" . Retrieved 10 November 2018.
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  27. Brown, Jonathan (12 October 2007). "Amis launches scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia". The Independent . Retrieved 1 July 2008.
  28. 1 2 Cockcroft, Lucy (10 October 2007). "Family defends 'racist' Sir Kingsley Amis". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 1 July 2008.
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  35. Wroe, Nicholas (2 February 2002). "The Guardian Profile: Terry Eagleton". the Guardian. Retrieved 18 August 2021.

Further reading

Terry Eagleton
FBA
Terry Eagleton in Manchester 2008.jpg
Eagleton in 2008
Born
Terence Francis Eagleton

(1943-02-22) 22 February 1943 (age 81)
Salford, England
Spouses
  • Rosemary Galpin
    (m. 1966;div. 1976)
  • Willa Murphy
    (m. 1997)
Children5
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic advisors Raymond Williams
Influences
Academic offices
Preceded by Terry Lecturer
2008
Succeeded by
Preceded by Gifford Lecturer at the
University of Edinburgh

2010
Succeeded by
Awards
Preceded by Deutscher Memorial Prize
1989
Succeeded by