English Literary Criticism and Continental Theory: a Study of Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton

Abstract

English “common-sense,” English “empiricism,” and distaste for theory, as well as lack of distinct theoretical output have often been highlighted. Terry Eagleton's passing remark in the "preface" to his Criticism and Ideology (1975) is representative: "[T]o intervene [into theoretical debate] from England is almost automatically to disenfranchise oneself from debate. It is to feel acutely bereft of a tradition, as a tolerated house-guest of Europe, a precocious but parasitic alien" (7). Underlying these recurrent emphases is a twofold thesis: (a) The English were merely stout empiricists with no taste for ‘’great ideas,” and (b) they lacked a theoretical tradition of their own. This twofold thesis finds its echo in narratives of English critical history that underscore the “dependency” of the English on continental theory, their parasitic relation to Europe’s “great ideas.” And indeed a cursory glance at this history seems to consolidate this predominant narrative. Aim Through a ‘genealogical’ reading of English literary criticism, this thesis has attempted to rethink the terms in which the relation between English literary criticism and continental theory have been posed, recovering those moments which contest the unitary, homogeneous narrative of the parasitic relation of English literary criticism to continental theory. The thesis has done so, however, not by contrapuntally positing a counter-argument but by exploring the possibility of such moments. For the sake of convenience, the thesis has restricted this investigation of the genealogy of English literary criticism mainly to two English "literary" critics; namely Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton. As such this thesis has been a comparative study of critical theory, which has drawn heavily on the history of literary criticism.