'The Eagleton Reader', edited by Stephen Regan was published in 1996 and so unfortunately doesn't cover Eagleton's more recent work in which he blurs the distinction between academic theorist and creative critic - I'm thinking of such books as 'The Truth About The Irish' and 'Figures of Dissent'-. 'The Eagleton Reader' gives a broad view of Eagleton's work from Catholic leftist of the 60's to postmodern debunker of the 90's. In terms of his own engaging style however, Terry really doesn't hit his stride until the 1980's. Most of the work featured here before that decade reads like the dry doctoral thesis of an industrious and serious-minded postgrad with a mundane enthusiasm for prefunctory Marxist criticism. Since 'Literary Theory' though, Eagleton has made a name for himself in relating cultural theories to everyday social and political practice and it is in this arena where he truely shines.

In 'Estrangement and Irony in the Fiction of Milan Kundera', he points out the paralysis of communist Eastern Europe, where paranoia about state survelliance reigns. In this claustraphobic enivironment every signifier holds within it the potential for a multiplicity of signifieds. This overreading of signs leads to impotent paranoia. Coincedentaly, this absence of stable meaning is one of Eagleton's main criticisms of much postmodern theory. In the chapter on 'Ideology' he further lambastes the postmodern theorists for their political vaucity. A vacuousness that 'reflects their customary distance from the world in which most people have to live, mistaking the media and the shopping mall for the rest of social reality'. His own Marxist beliefs see him trying to hold on to those Enlightenment values which challeneged ancient fantasies by pointing those values towards the new fantasies of the media and consumerism. This illuminating chapter also covers the enduring contrast between the British academic world which Eagleton inhabited and the continental thinkers whom he drew most inspiration from. The 18th century Enlightenment saw the beginnings of this battle between the pragmatist and the ideologist. The French Revolution brought with it the cries for a society ruled by reason. But within the social upheaval that brought the Revolution about, much of the political establishment in Britain saw a vision of a universal social order that was fundamentaly flawed. To them human beings are much too uncertain in their thoughts and actions, too spontaneous and intuitive to be rendered under close critical analysis. These doubts about the motives of human intentions inevitably lead to a conservative politics. The rise of English Literature as a subject of academic inquiry is closely related to this divergence between Britain and the continent. The English championed literature as an 'alternative to systematic enquiry, not an object of it'. As such, traditional literary criticism in perfidious Albion has shown great resistance to 'ideas'.

In what is probably the most significant chapter in this book, Eagleton rips into England's traditional conservative and liberal critics such as Carlyle, Arnold, Eliot and Leavis. In fact 'The Crisis of Contempoary Culture' - his inaugural lecture as Wharton Professor of English at Oxford in 1992 - is probably the best distillation of his cultural stance to date. He holds the New Right to account for the obvious paradox of their political position, colluding with a form of economics which by its very nature 'drains value and purpose from social life' and then decries the loss of absolute value that results.

In a clever essay on Arthur Schopenhaur from 1990's 'The Ideology of the Aesthetic', Eagleton highlights Schopenhaur's central thesis that human beings are slaves to their wilful desires. This corresponds nicely to 19th century bourgeois society's belief that capitalism is desire personified. But by allowing our desires free rein, do we not then become enslaved to its all-pervasive objectives? This resurfaces in one of Eagleton's works on Irish culture, 'Heathcliff and the Great Hunger'. In it, he recognises the traditional adjectives used to contrast 19th century Ireland and England. Ireland is naked, unbridled Nature in comparison with England as ordered, cultivated Culture. However, when one focus's on the lassiez-faire economics embraced by England at the time with the contempt it held for traditional Irish ways and customs, that dichotomy can easily be turned on its head.

We learn a little something about the personal past of Terry Eagleton in his heartfelt obituary to his Cambridge mentor Raymond Williams. Eagleton, as a short working-class northerner, felt ill at ease in the University Common Rooms of Cambridge where every student seemed to be over 6 foot, 'brayed rather than spoke and addressed each other like public meetings in intimate cafes'. In his introduction to his play 'Saint Oscar', he suggests that Wilde has helped him not only come to terms with his own Irish roots, but also helped him to develop a synthesis between his creative and critical writing. Despite the historical and political upheaveals of his own time where he has seen Marxism cross from being false but relevant to true but superfluous, he nevertheless maintains 'there is no reason why this sobering thought should change what one strives for, which remains true and valuable whether or not it is realised in the here and now.'