A review by tombomp
Marxism and Literary Criticism by Terry Eagleton

2.0

Decent summary of some strands of Marxist thought about literature. The last chapter, which is detailed and primarily about Brecht, is fascinating. Suffers from its length and its refusal to define what Marxist literary criticism *is* - it doesn't talk about anything past the Second World War, leaving a pretty huge gap. Refers often to what Marx/Engels/Lenin/Trotsky thought but doesn't really describe the details much at all. What he does describe leaves their thoughts sounding pretty basic - what I got from it is mostly "they thought literature should expose contradictions in society", but it's hedged with a lot of "but"s that don't really pin it down. This isn't to say it's not interesting or even good, but I don't feel much better informed about Marxist criticism in general, outside of the excellent stuff about Brecht's ideas.