Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader

Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader is designed to give both students and lecturers a sense of the historical formation of a Marxist literary tradition. A unique compilation of principal texts in that tradition, it offers the reader new ways of reading Marxism, literature, theory, and the social possibilities of writing. The collection is introduced by both editors: Terry Eagleton, writing at the point of what he describes as "the most grievous crisis in Marxism′s fraught career", surveys the evolution of Marxist criticism, and addresses the profoundly problematic question of Marxism′s future, especially as seen in the controversial light of postmodern theory. Drew Milne contributes a key essay on "Reading Marxist Literary Theory", exploring in the process the complex relations between Marx′s writings and Marxism. Represented in this reader are: Theodor W. Adorno, Louis Althusser, Aijaz Ahmad, Chida Amuta, Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Ernest Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Alex Callinicos, Christopher Caudwell, Terry Eagleton, Friedrich Engels, Lucien Goldmann, Fredric Jameson, V. I. Lenin, Georg Lukacs, Karl Marx, The Marxist–Feminist Collective, Jean–Paul Sartre, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Leon Trotsky, V. N. Volsinov, Galvano Della Volpe, Alick West, and Raymond Williams.

Introduction. Part I: Terry Eagleton: . Introduction. Part II: Drew Milne. 1. Marx and Engels. 2. Leo Tolstoy and His Epoch (1911): V. I. Lenin. 3. The Formalist School of Peotry and Marxism: Leon Trotsky. 4. Corcerning the Relationship of the Basis and Superstructures: V. N. Volosinov. 5. Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia (1929). Addendum to ′The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire′ (1938): Walter Benjamin. 6. Marxism and Poetry (1935): Ernst Bloch. 7. English Poets: The Period of Primitive Accumulation (1937): Christopher Caudwell. 8. The Relativity of Literary Value (1937): Alick West. 9. A Short Organum for the Theatre (1949): Bertolt Brecht. 10. The Tasks of Brechtian Criticism (1956): Roland Barthes. 11. The Ideology of Modernism (1957): Georg Lukacs. 12. The Semantic Dialectic (1960): Galvano Della Volpe. 13. Commitment (1962) T. W. Adorno. 14. Introduction to the Problems of a Sociology of the Novel (1963): Lucien Goldmann. 15. The Objective Spirit (1972): Jean–Paul Sartre. 16. Tragedy and Revolution (1966), Literature (1977): Raymond Williams. 17. A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre (1966): Louis Althusser. 18. On Literature as an Ideological Form (1974): Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey. 19. Towards a Science of the Text (1960): Terry Eagleton. 20. Women′s Writing: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, Aurora Leigh (1978): The Marxist–Feminist Collective. 21. On Interpretation (1981): Fredric Jameson. 22. Jameson′s Rhetoric of Otherness and the ′National Allegory′ (1987): Aijaz Ahmad. 23. Can the Subaltern Speak?(1988): Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 24. The Materialism of Cultural Nationalism: Achebe′s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God (1989): Chida Amuta. 25. The Jargon of Postmodernity (1989): Alex Callinicos. Index.

Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester. His works include The Ideology of the Aesthetic (1990) Literacy Theory: An Introduction (1983), Walter Benjamin (1981) and Marxism and Literacy Criticism (1976). Drew Milne is a lecturer in the School of English and American Studies at the University of Sussex.