Modernism

Terry Eagleton has been the Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University and is the author of more than fifty books in the fields of literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion.

“Mr. Eagleton makes the reasonable point that ‘the new is not desirable in itself.’ . . . In one of many quips in Modernism, he remarks that ‘novelty is just the same old thing.’”—James Campbell, Wall Street Journal“Eagleton, alert to rash generalizations and simplistic explanations, is a tonic for lazy thinking and his new book Modernism is an intelligent and lively overview of the twentieth century’s artistic revolution.”—Sean Sheehan, The Prisma“A finely judged, beautifully articulated, typically witty, and consistently surprising account of literary modernism written by one of contemporary criticism’s most trailblazing thinkers.”—Nathan Waddell, author of A Bright Cold Day: The Wonder of George Orwell“To read Terry Eagleton on modernism is to be in such good and gentle company as almost to feel you are encountering one of modernism’s own most compelling figures, a figure to whom Eagleton himself in passing refers—namely, the one who, in The Waste Land, is said to be always ‘walking beside you.’”—John Schad, author of Paris Bride: A Modernist Life“Through its deft and vivid account, Eagleton’s Modernism brilliantly interweaves literature with its political, economic and philosophical hinterland as it measures modernism against alternative avant-gardes. The book is written and shaped to make the period startlingly fresh for all readers.”—Steven Matthews, author of On Magnetism“This is the sort of light-footed dash through the meanings of modernism that is only available to those with decades of scholarly experience. . . . A vital account of the crises to which modernism responded, its own exhaustion and disillusionment, and its cementing in contemporary teaching and the wider imagination.”—Abbie Garrington, author of Haptic Modernism: Touch and the Tactile in Modernist Writing