What do you think?
Rate this book
The Function of Criticism
A history and critique of the last 200 years of cultural criticism, from Addison and Steele to Barthes and Derrida.
This wide-ranging book argues that criticism emerged in early bourgeois society as a central feature of a “public sphere” in which political, ethical, and literary judgements could mingle under the benign rule of reason. The disintegration of this fragile culture brought on a crisis in criticism, whose history since the 18th century has been fraught with ambivalence and anxiety.
Eagleton’s account embraces Addison and Steele, Johnson and the 19-century reviewers, such critics as Arnold and Stephen, the heyday of Scrutiny and New Criticism, and finally the proliferation of avant-garde literary theories such as deconstructionism.
The Function of Criticism is nothing less than a history and critique of the “critical institution” itself. Eagleton’s judgements on individual critics are sharp and illuminating, which his general argument raises crucial questions about the relations between language, literature and politics.
This wide-ranging book argues that criticism emerged in early bourgeois society as a central feature of a “public sphere” in which political, ethical, and literary judgements could mingle under the benign rule of reason. The disintegration of this fragile culture brought on a crisis in criticism, whose history since the 18th century has been fraught with ambivalence and anxiety.
Eagleton’s account embraces Addison and Steele, Johnson and the 19-century reviewers, such critics as Arnold and Stephen, the heyday of Scrutiny and New Criticism, and finally the proliferation of avant-garde literary theories such as deconstructionism.
The Function of Criticism is nothing less than a history and critique of the “critical institution” itself. Eagleton’s judgements on individual critics are sharp and illuminating, which his general argument raises crucial questions about the relations between language, literature and politics.
138 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2006
12 people are currently reading
815 people want to read
About the author
Terry Eagleton
168 books1,303 followersWidely regarded as England's most influential living literary critic & theorist, Dr. Terry Eagleton currently serves as Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster and as Visiting Professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He was Thomas Warton Prof. of English Literature at the University of Oxford ('92-01) & John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester 'til '08. He returned to the University of Notre Dame in the Autumn '09 semester as Distinguished Visitor in the English Department.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
He's written over 40 books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction ('83); The Ideology of the Aesthetic ('90) & The Illusions of Postmodernism ('96).
He delivered Yale's '08 Terry Lectures and gave a Gifford Lecture in 3/10, titled The God Debate.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
February 18, 2013
The text on the back cover of the Verso paperback of “The Function of Criticism” calls Terry Eagleton “Britain’s foremost Marxist critic”. Eagleton may well agree with that estimate although one imagines there isn’t much competition for the title.
The rise of the bourgeoisie, with its material basis in the expanding British colonial system, slavery in America and the West Indies providing cheap raw materials and ready-made markets for manufactured goods and accelerating population growth in England, challenged the absolutist state. The ideas of the Enlightenment provided the intellectual firepower for the rising middle class; in England this was expressed in the newly vibrant public sphere and the discussions of cultural, political and economic questions in periodicals, most notably The Spectator and The Tatler, run by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Eagleton skips Aristotle, Augustine, Phillip Sydney and everyone else before Addison and Steele--which is fine since he gets pretty technical in places and probably assumes that readers of this book don't need yet another slog through "Poetics", "On Christian Doctrine" or "The Defense of Poesy".
Criticism today has been reduced to functioning as a public relations and advertising tool of the publishing industry (itself under significant pressure) or esoteric exercises confined to the academy with no influence on the wider world.
Just about anything Eagleton writes is worth reading—he is an original thinker but, more importantly, a producer of excellent prose. While there aren’t many startling insights in “The Function of Criticism”, his synthesis of the main currents of critical thought over the past 200 years is masterful.
The rise of the bourgeoisie, with its material basis in the expanding British colonial system, slavery in America and the West Indies providing cheap raw materials and ready-made markets for manufactured goods and accelerating population growth in England, challenged the absolutist state. The ideas of the Enlightenment provided the intellectual firepower for the rising middle class; in England this was expressed in the newly vibrant public sphere and the discussions of cultural, political and economic questions in periodicals, most notably The Spectator and The Tatler, run by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Eagleton skips Aristotle, Augustine, Phillip Sydney and everyone else before Addison and Steele--which is fine since he gets pretty technical in places and probably assumes that readers of this book don't need yet another slog through "Poetics", "On Christian Doctrine" or "The Defense of Poesy".
Criticism today has been reduced to functioning as a public relations and advertising tool of the publishing industry (itself under significant pressure) or esoteric exercises confined to the academy with no influence on the wider world.
Just about anything Eagleton writes is worth reading—he is an original thinker but, more importantly, a producer of excellent prose. While there aren’t many startling insights in “The Function of Criticism”, his synthesis of the main currents of critical thought over the past 200 years is masterful.
September 16, 2020
The critic is always haunted by the question--what is point of criticism? Who is the critic addressing to? Other critics? Other "professionals","intellectuals" or "academics"? Other class anxious bourgeosie? Or finally, is it the public as such, undivided and amorphous? In the classical public sphere of the Victorian era the critic at least had access to some sort of political lever through he could conduct his brand of cultural politics, effectively intervening in the social and against what Eagleton calls the Absolutist State. But they were not public "intellectuals" in the conventional sense of the term. However, the progressive specialisation of knowledge, and the invasion of abstract commodity exchage into all corners of life beginning at the middle of the 18th century and exploding at the turn of the 19th century rendered the hack (the man of letters) and the romantic sage bereft of any real power as they could no longer keep up with the developments in all fields. If Eagleton is right, this is the moment of the invention of criticism as "literary" criticism, tasked with fractally reflecting on the object of its own invention and marginalized as a specialist discipline, no longer able to intervene in "Life" or the social. This moment coincides with the dissolution of classical public sphere and the ascendency of what today we know as Public Relations. Eagleton is right on the money when he suggests that Contemporary "Theory" has inherited the same reflexive self impotence mentioned above and even today is struggling to overcome the aphoria, which it cannot do so unless there is already a counterpublic and "proletarian" sphere in place to receive and charge its theoretical musings with real political power
December 12, 2017
Not really what I was expecting (I was hoping for something more in the vein of his excellent Literary Theory: An Introduction). A history of the critic's role over the last few centuries with reference to the bourgeois public sphere, periodicals like The Spectator and The Tatler, New Criticism, and deconstructionism. The goal of this book is summarised in the last few pages:
If you're not that interested in the traditional role of the cultural critic, then this book is probably not for you.
The role of the contemporary critic, then, is a traditional one. The point of the present essay is to recall criticism to its traditional role, not to invent some fashionable new function for it.
If you're not that interested in the traditional role of the cultural critic, then this book is probably not for you.
December 25, 2014
every time i try to write a review the events of the last two weeks spring into sharp relief and I feel sad.
Maybe on the re-read.
Maybe on the re-read.
August 12, 2011
What are critics for? Who benefits or loses from criticism? No, this is not a book about saying mean things to people who you don't like. It is a book (really, an essay) about the decline of what used to simply go by the title 'criticism' but which now has grown appendages to become all varieties of fancy arenas of study: political, feminist, deconstructive, structural and literary; to name a few (also now know as 'college majors'). Criticism, for Eagleton, is the discursive practice of rational exchange for the benefit of the common good . At least, that's what it was. Now, Eagleton tells us, criticism is "a handful of individuals reviewing each other's books"(107).
What captured the political imagination in the 18th century of bankers and miners became in the 19th a practice of public morality from the pens of sages, only to become concerned with 'literature' in the last century (that is, concerned with books that most people will never read). The 'civilizing function of criticism', its ability to attend to matters of social ills, poetic thought and constructive (and humanizing) exchange, has been relegated to the self-appointed few who speak to each other, write tomes against each other, and generally live a pretty bourgeois existence in late-capitalism. "Modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolute state," laments Eagleton, and now it has been assumed by market practices.
Eagleton finds hope in the likes of Raymond Williams, and spends the final chapter outlining why, but if you are not already familiar with Williams (I, for one, am not) then it mightn't be self-evident how he is any different to the 'critics' who Eagleton brushes by in the pages of this essay. The one point that arises above Eagelton's sometime obfuscating style is William's unflinching struggle against the tidal-wave of 'mass culture' (or, the cultural industry) in matters of social life, political forecast and creative literature. Williams, Eagleton notes, is more like the early critics who understood the 'social sphere' to be where the 'public' is shaped and formed. The difference for a modern critic like Williams, is that something called 'the public' no longer exists. It is now all about understanding particular 'markets of people' and addressing them alone.
In these pages, Eagleton offers a lament for the missing public, the bourgeois critic and good 'ole rational exchange. It's not his best book, nor his easiest to read, but contained in this essay is a passionate hope that creative forms of discourse will one day break from the jail of ivory towers and select journals, and once again be the means of emancipation.
What captured the political imagination in the 18th century of bankers and miners became in the 19th a practice of public morality from the pens of sages, only to become concerned with 'literature' in the last century (that is, concerned with books that most people will never read). The 'civilizing function of criticism', its ability to attend to matters of social ills, poetic thought and constructive (and humanizing) exchange, has been relegated to the self-appointed few who speak to each other, write tomes against each other, and generally live a pretty bourgeois existence in late-capitalism. "Modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolute state," laments Eagleton, and now it has been assumed by market practices.
Eagleton finds hope in the likes of Raymond Williams, and spends the final chapter outlining why, but if you are not already familiar with Williams (I, for one, am not) then it mightn't be self-evident how he is any different to the 'critics' who Eagleton brushes by in the pages of this essay. The one point that arises above Eagelton's sometime obfuscating style is William's unflinching struggle against the tidal-wave of 'mass culture' (or, the cultural industry) in matters of social life, political forecast and creative literature. Williams, Eagleton notes, is more like the early critics who understood the 'social sphere' to be where the 'public' is shaped and formed. The difference for a modern critic like Williams, is that something called 'the public' no longer exists. It is now all about understanding particular 'markets of people' and addressing them alone.
In these pages, Eagleton offers a lament for the missing public, the bourgeois critic and good 'ole rational exchange. It's not his best book, nor his easiest to read, but contained in this essay is a passionate hope that creative forms of discourse will one day break from the jail of ivory towers and select journals, and once again be the means of emancipation.
June 7, 2020
This isn't an easy read but a worthwile one. Eagleton survey's criticism's development from the 18th century to today, marking the ideological development of criticism along with the material development of the times. Although he doesn't mention Marx that often, his arguments are soaked in Marxism, something I do find delightful in cultural theory.
March 4, 2021
The book addresses the question: "what is the role of criticism today?" which is a valid one. It seems criticism itself is quite vague today. The first thing pops into people's mind when they hear criticism is "the practice of evaluating something", that is inaccurate though.
The book tries to answer this question through reviewing the history of criticism in the UK starting from the public spheres passing through the different roles of some of the magazines and periodicals in the 18th century. It tries to put this term in its historical context and study the transformation of the act of criticism to get to an answer of what is criticism today.
The book has good insights but i was expecting more from it.
The book tries to answer this question through reviewing the history of criticism in the UK starting from the public spheres passing through the different roles of some of the magazines and periodicals in the 18th century. It tries to put this term in its historical context and study the transformation of the act of criticism to get to an answer of what is criticism today.
The book has good insights but i was expecting more from it.
December 30, 2021
Eagleton opens this book with a few simple questions about criticism that he hopes to answer: 'What is the point of [criticism]? Who is it intended to reach, influence, impress? What functions are ascribed to such a critical act by society as a whole?'
The response to these questions are developed throughout his presentation of the importance of criticsm in the past. In the 18th century criticism was primarily written by and for the bourgeoisie, while in the 19th century criticism began to defend or oppose the status quo, and in the 20th century criticism was almost exclusively adopted by the liberal humanist tradition. I say 'almost' because deconstruction was a peculiar exception, as the non-radical elements were incorporated into institutions such as the Yale School, while the radical elements were ignored. In this sense deconstruction still has the potentiality to be radical if we adopt deconstruction wholesale.
In the process of outlining the history of criticism Eagleton uses Habermas' concept of the 'public sphere' which does expand and systemitize his critical outlook. In particular these 'public spheres' are useful for explaining the bourgeois bubbles of thought in the 18th century and the way in which capitalism has eroded the private sphere. There are limitations to this concept though, and that becomes particularly apparent when Eagleton is explaining the 19th century criticism as that era cannot be exclusively reduced to one or even many 'public spheres'.
Eagleton's answer to the opening questions is a simple "carry on!" or as he puts it:
'The role of the contemporary critic, then, is a traditional one. The point of the present essay is to recall criticism to its traditional role, not to invent some fashionable new function for it. For a new generation of critics in Western society, 'English Literature' is now an inhereted label for a field within which many diverse preoccupations congregate: semiotics, psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural theory, the representation of gender, popular writing, and of course the conventionally valued writings of the past. These pursuits have no obvious unity beyond a concern with the symbolic processes of social life, and the social production of forms of subjectivity. Critics who find such pursuits modish and distastefully new-fangled are, as a matter of cultural history, mistaken. They represent a contemporary version of the most venerable topics of criticism, before it was narrowed and impoverished to the so-called 'literary canon'. Moreover, it is possible to argue that such an enquiry might contribute in a modest way to our very survival. [...] Modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state; unless its future is now defined as a struggle against the bourgeois state, it might have no future at all.'
The response to these questions are developed throughout his presentation of the importance of criticsm in the past. In the 18th century criticism was primarily written by and for the bourgeoisie, while in the 19th century criticism began to defend or oppose the status quo, and in the 20th century criticism was almost exclusively adopted by the liberal humanist tradition. I say 'almost' because deconstruction was a peculiar exception, as the non-radical elements were incorporated into institutions such as the Yale School, while the radical elements were ignored. In this sense deconstruction still has the potentiality to be radical if we adopt deconstruction wholesale.
In the process of outlining the history of criticism Eagleton uses Habermas' concept of the 'public sphere' which does expand and systemitize his critical outlook. In particular these 'public spheres' are useful for explaining the bourgeois bubbles of thought in the 18th century and the way in which capitalism has eroded the private sphere. There are limitations to this concept though, and that becomes particularly apparent when Eagleton is explaining the 19th century criticism as that era cannot be exclusively reduced to one or even many 'public spheres'.
Eagleton's answer to the opening questions is a simple "carry on!" or as he puts it:
'The role of the contemporary critic, then, is a traditional one. The point of the present essay is to recall criticism to its traditional role, not to invent some fashionable new function for it. For a new generation of critics in Western society, 'English Literature' is now an inhereted label for a field within which many diverse preoccupations congregate: semiotics, psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural theory, the representation of gender, popular writing, and of course the conventionally valued writings of the past. These pursuits have no obvious unity beyond a concern with the symbolic processes of social life, and the social production of forms of subjectivity. Critics who find such pursuits modish and distastefully new-fangled are, as a matter of cultural history, mistaken. They represent a contemporary version of the most venerable topics of criticism, before it was narrowed and impoverished to the so-called 'literary canon'. Moreover, it is possible to argue that such an enquiry might contribute in a modest way to our very survival. [...] Modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state; unless its future is now defined as a struggle against the bourgeois state, it might have no future at all.'
November 12, 2023
ایگلتون خواستگاه نقد رو یک ارض جدید مبادلاتی میدونه. این همزیستی فکری با محیط به افراد فرودست تر اجازه نوعی شرکت در تعاملات اجتماعی رو میده که تقریبا هیچ پیش نیاز طبقاتی یا مالی نداره.
از طرفی منتقد اولیه (نوع موردعلاقه خودش هم) رو کسی میدونه که نگاه غیرتخصصیش به مسائل با دانش و زاویه دید عمومی به اعتلای فرهنگ جامعه کمک میکنه. منتقد باید بطور خلاصه یه جنتلمن خوش ذوق ولی از خود مردم باشه! و نقد ادبی نیاز داره به این نقطه برگرده. طبق همین موضوع این برای
برای من جالبه که خود ایگلتون تو همین کتاب میاد از رویکرد نقدی خاص و غیرعمومی (مارکسیستی) برای توصیف اوضاع استفاده میکنه.
بعلاوه، فکر میکنم تلاش این بوده که کارکرد نقد بصورت دیسکورس بیان شه اما خیلی جاها ت��ریخی شدن بیش از حد متن شمارو از مقصد اصلی فاصله میده.
از طرفی منتقد اولیه (نوع موردعلاقه خودش هم) رو کسی میدونه که نگاه غیرتخصصیش به مسائل با دانش و زاویه دید عمومی به اعتلای فرهنگ جامعه کمک میکنه. منتقد باید بطور خلاصه یه جنتلمن خوش ذوق ولی از خود مردم باشه! و نقد ادبی نیاز داره به این نقطه برگرده. طبق همین موضوع این برای
برای من جالبه که خود ایگلتون تو همین کتاب میاد از رویکرد نقدی خاص و غیرعمومی (مارکسیستی) برای توصیف اوضاع استفاده میکنه.
بعلاوه، فکر میکنم تلاش این بوده که کارکرد نقد بصورت دیسکورس بیان شه اما خیلی جاها ت��ریخی شدن بیش از حد متن شمارو از مقصد اصلی فاصله میده.
February 5, 2021
This is quite old now and very broad in range/short in pages, so it's only useful in a limited manner. Eagleton also seems to have decided in the last few years that all the hopeful predictions for the future of lit crit that he set out in this book have now failed, and everything's hopeless. That said, it's good for what it is: a neat summary of the social role of the literary critic through British history from a Marxist perspective. I'd be interested (although not particularly hopeful for the outcome) to see if anyone's followed this up by charting the development of literary criticism since the 80s from a Marxist POV.
On a separate note, I've seen quotes from this book selectively cited a couple of times to discredit Derrida and anything deconstruction ever attempted as politically regressive/inherently liberal, and interestingly Eagleton very much doesn't write off Derrida at all –– he takes issue with a particular school of American deconstructionists who have removed the political element from Derrida's analysis (which is the paragraph everyone gets the disembodied quotes from), then says that there is absolutely good work being done within the academy that uses Derrida (but that it's a fine line, and deconstruction is easily appropriated by liberalism as a catch-all escape from political culpability). Going to have to sit down and read some Derrida properly before I have an opinion of my own, but interesting to see where people get their pull quotes.
On a separate note, I've seen quotes from this book selectively cited a couple of times to discredit Derrida and anything deconstruction ever attempted as politically regressive/inherently liberal, and interestingly Eagleton very much doesn't write off Derrida at all –– he takes issue with a particular school of American deconstructionists who have removed the political element from Derrida's analysis (which is the paragraph everyone gets the disembodied quotes from), then says that there is absolutely good work being done within the academy that uses Derrida (but that it's a fine line, and deconstruction is easily appropriated by liberalism as a catch-all escape from political culpability). Going to have to sit down and read some Derrida properly before I have an opinion of my own, but interesting to see where people get their pull quotes.
Read
July 4, 2020This was mostly torturous, and I don’t really know why I did it to myself. He muddies his own point by arguing in a circular manner that literary criticism is, isn’t, is, and isn’t the same as book reviewing or chilling in literary salons. The final chapter is marginally interesting and not caught up in sounding like a hoity toity critic (funny, since he also tries to make the argument that criticism should be of and for the people but writes like your typical inaccessible academic), but you can skip the rest.
May 13, 2024
I’ve read several of Terry Eagleton’s more recent books and I really love his barbed and often hilarious writing. This earlier book, though, is a drier and more traditional academic essay; yet Eagleton is too good a writer to make it anything less than compelling. A brief but thorough tour of the last few centuries of British criticism.
August 21, 2024
For starters, the central theme which Eagleton presents in his essay could be astonishing for some and could come as a matter of fact for some. If looked at sensibly, the way Eagleton talks about the inkling of a ‘public sphere’ developing in the 18th century is rather substantial. He goes on to trace the account of criticism very effortlessly in this tome.
The idea which Eagleton discusses in the tome is clear from what he wrote in the preface to the book that "criticism today lacks all substantive social function". And he factually goes on to display that this was positively not the case in earlier centuries when criticism had its place in the 'public sphere'. Contrary to this early representation of criticism, as stated by Eagleton, criticism nowadays is "either part of the public relation branch of the literary industry, or a matter wholly internal to the academy". People might have an unalike opinion, but let us look at his argument in brief.
Eagleton acknowledge the fact that his essay is "a drastically selective history of the institution of criticism in England since early eighteenth century."
The First Part of Eagleton's argument defines the term public sphere as something which comprises a realm of social institution like clubs journals, coffee house, etc. which becomes the assembling point of the private individuals for the exchange of discourse which is reasonable in nature.
And in the course of exchanging the reasonable discourse, these individuals link them into an interconnected one, which might assume a commanding political force.
In this review, it is sensible to mention two such public spheres which were very central to the public domain of 18th century England, and these were Steel's Tattler and Addison's Spectator.
However, undoubtedly, these periodicals made use of mockery and sarcasm to correct a licentious and socially regressive aristocracy
It seems that Eagleton while reflecting upon the view of Marxist critics that in the age of Enlightenment it is not possible to separate the criticism from the realm of public sphere says that "literary discussion became an arena to pave the way for political discussion in the middle classes".
Truly stated, Addison had a very clear picture in his mind on how to criticize the aristocratic ruling class without breaking with it and also by avoiding vituperative writings of writers like Swift and Pope. At this point Eagleton again looks towards Habermas, who pointed out the reason for the fact, why public sphere grew more rapidly in England than that of any other country in Europe. The reason is, that the aristocratic class, which traditionally believed in the cultural taste started to share interest with the emerging mercantile class.
And this intimacy between the political, cultural, and economic preoccupation is in bold while in other countries of Europe such and intimacy was greyed out, as compared to that of the England.
In the light of this view the idea or undertaking Arnold had in his mind was not something inimitable. As Eagleton puts it, "What will help to unify English ruling bloc is culture, and the critic is the chief bearer of this historic task [thus] modern criticism in England was born ironically of the political consensus."
In the second part of the tome Eagleton parleys about the motivation behind the collapse of classic public spheres in England. He says that the "factors responsible for the gradual disintegration of the classical public sphere, two are of particular relevance to the history of English criticism:
**The first is economic. Why so? Simply because of the fact that as capitalist society develops and market forces come increasingly to determine the compactness of the literary products, it is no longer conceivable to assume that 'taste" or 'cultivation' are the fruits of cultured dialogue and rational debate.
The sources which define the culture are beyond the frontier of the public sphere. Private commercial and cumulative economic interests reduce the public sphere and breakdown its consensual nature.
In the earlier times the public sphere held the status of co-subject of the author, but now its status has been discoloured to an indefinite unit.
**Another reason which Eagleton talks about as being responsible for the disintegration of the public sphere is political. Any state or the nation is identified with the class which is dominant or the ruling class. This can be clearly 'seen during the Victorian age when the notion of gentleman was at its peak.
Political handling of the public spheres can be literary seen in some of the magazines like Edinburgh review, or Quantity Review, or the London Magazine, etc. Let us see what Eagleton has to say about it: "If the criticism had to some degree slipped the economic yoke of its earlier years whom it often no more than thinly concealed profit from bestsellers wares, it has done so early to exchange such enthrallment for a political one. Criticism was now explicitly unabashedly political."
And this is the point when criticism loses its cultural harmony and becomes a politically contested space, and there is a birth of 19th century sage.
Now the sage who belonged to the Victorian age exasperated to scheme an image of him/her which is a political in nature. As said by Carlyle, Arnold suited the grouping.
Eagleton while continuing with his argument endures to trace the vagaries which happened in self- conception of the critic until we see Eliot coming in the light and further we perceive Raymond Williams on the surface.
This book serves as one of the seminal texts in the field of literary criticism. Student or scholar, either seeking to cut your teeth into the nuances of literary criticism, or trying to prepare the study mat for your next class, you cannot just disregard this tome.
The idea which Eagleton discusses in the tome is clear from what he wrote in the preface to the book that "criticism today lacks all substantive social function". And he factually goes on to display that this was positively not the case in earlier centuries when criticism had its place in the 'public sphere'. Contrary to this early representation of criticism, as stated by Eagleton, criticism nowadays is "either part of the public relation branch of the literary industry, or a matter wholly internal to the academy". People might have an unalike opinion, but let us look at his argument in brief.
Eagleton acknowledge the fact that his essay is "a drastically selective history of the institution of criticism in England since early eighteenth century."
The First Part of Eagleton's argument defines the term public sphere as something which comprises a realm of social institution like clubs journals, coffee house, etc. which becomes the assembling point of the private individuals for the exchange of discourse which is reasonable in nature.
And in the course of exchanging the reasonable discourse, these individuals link them into an interconnected one, which might assume a commanding political force.
In this review, it is sensible to mention two such public spheres which were very central to the public domain of 18th century England, and these were Steel's Tattler and Addison's Spectator.
However, undoubtedly, these periodicals made use of mockery and sarcasm to correct a licentious and socially regressive aristocracy
It seems that Eagleton while reflecting upon the view of Marxist critics that in the age of Enlightenment it is not possible to separate the criticism from the realm of public sphere says that "literary discussion became an arena to pave the way for political discussion in the middle classes".
Truly stated, Addison had a very clear picture in his mind on how to criticize the aristocratic ruling class without breaking with it and also by avoiding vituperative writings of writers like Swift and Pope. At this point Eagleton again looks towards Habermas, who pointed out the reason for the fact, why public sphere grew more rapidly in England than that of any other country in Europe. The reason is, that the aristocratic class, which traditionally believed in the cultural taste started to share interest with the emerging mercantile class.
And this intimacy between the political, cultural, and economic preoccupation is in bold while in other countries of Europe such and intimacy was greyed out, as compared to that of the England.
In the light of this view the idea or undertaking Arnold had in his mind was not something inimitable. As Eagleton puts it, "What will help to unify English ruling bloc is culture, and the critic is the chief bearer of this historic task [thus] modern criticism in England was born ironically of the political consensus."
In the second part of the tome Eagleton parleys about the motivation behind the collapse of classic public spheres in England. He says that the "factors responsible for the gradual disintegration of the classical public sphere, two are of particular relevance to the history of English criticism:
**The first is economic. Why so? Simply because of the fact that as capitalist society develops and market forces come increasingly to determine the compactness of the literary products, it is no longer conceivable to assume that 'taste" or 'cultivation' are the fruits of cultured dialogue and rational debate.
The sources which define the culture are beyond the frontier of the public sphere. Private commercial and cumulative economic interests reduce the public sphere and breakdown its consensual nature.
In the earlier times the public sphere held the status of co-subject of the author, but now its status has been discoloured to an indefinite unit.
**Another reason which Eagleton talks about as being responsible for the disintegration of the public sphere is political. Any state or the nation is identified with the class which is dominant or the ruling class. This can be clearly 'seen during the Victorian age when the notion of gentleman was at its peak.
Political handling of the public spheres can be literary seen in some of the magazines like Edinburgh review, or Quantity Review, or the London Magazine, etc. Let us see what Eagleton has to say about it: "If the criticism had to some degree slipped the economic yoke of its earlier years whom it often no more than thinly concealed profit from bestsellers wares, it has done so early to exchange such enthrallment for a political one. Criticism was now explicitly unabashedly political."
And this is the point when criticism loses its cultural harmony and becomes a politically contested space, and there is a birth of 19th century sage.
Now the sage who belonged to the Victorian age exasperated to scheme an image of him/her which is a political in nature. As said by Carlyle, Arnold suited the grouping.
Eagleton while continuing with his argument endures to trace the vagaries which happened in self- conception of the critic until we see Eliot coming in the light and further we perceive Raymond Williams on the surface.
This book serves as one of the seminal texts in the field of literary criticism. Student or scholar, either seeking to cut your teeth into the nuances of literary criticism, or trying to prepare the study mat for your next class, you cannot just disregard this tome.
September 13, 2023
Así es soy crítica marxista histórica
July 13, 2013
I think 'The History of Criticism' would be a more apt title for this book. Eagleton traces the history of the 'field' of criticism starting from the Habermasian bourgeois English public sphere in the eighteenth century, where men of the emerging middle-class gathered in coffee houses and wrote to exchange ideas purely on the basis of reason, to the nineteenth century Victorian man-of-letters, to the state of 'literary criticism' in the twentieth. It offers a very good introduction and overview of the origins and changes to the practise of criticism which I found very useful. To know the pressures and factors that went into birthing the oppositional discourses of the 1960's onwards, for example, has been very enlightening for my understanding of said fields.
September 14, 2021
In his preface he says “the argument of this book is that criticism today lacks all substantive social function.“ “That this has not always been the case and that it need not even today be the case, I try to show by a drastically selective history of the institution of criticism in England since the early 18th century.“
“The names of Addison and Steele signify the very essence of English compromise: that adroit blending of grace and gravitas, urbanity and morality, correction and consolidation could not fail to seduce a later bourgeois intelligentsia now spiritually severed from the industrial capitalism which had produced them.“ He likes these word oppositions.
“If Addison and Steele mark the moment of bourgeois respectability, they also signify the point at which the hitherto disreputable genre of journalism becomes legitimate.“
“What such a realm will then be unable to withstand is the inruption into it of social and political interests and palpable conflict with its own universal rational norms.
“Fiercely partisan, the Edinburgh soon provoked into countervailing existence the Tory Quarterly Review…“
“Criticism was now explicitly, unabashedly political…“
““The truth is“ Hunt lamented “the criticism itself, for the most part, is a nuisance and an impertinance: and no good-natured reflecting men would be critics, if it were not that there are worse.““
““…the growth of public opinion implies the fostering of it“”
“The critic is ideally the mirror but in fact the lamp: his role is becoming the ultimately untenable one of “expressing“ a public opinion he covertly or flagrantly manipulates.“
“Criticism, then, has become a locus of political contention rather than a terrine of cultural consensus…“
“The question now confronting criticism is simply this: how is it possible to be a critic at all if art is its own self grounded, self-validating truth, if social discourse is irremediably alienated, and if there is no audience to address in the first place? This ends chapter 2.
“Once the critic begins to fear that his interlocutors, left to their own devices, might wander off into gross ideological error, he must jettison any trust that the free markets of discourse, left to its own workings, will deliver the appropriate moral and intellectual goods.
“On Liberty, however, deploys the trust and in the principle of that sphere against the depressing reality of it. To trust the free play of discourse in such conditions is of course to take an enormous risk; but Mill is well aware of that error, ideological turmoil and political vulnerability may be the price one has to pay if the deep discursive structures of the bourgeois subject – freedom, equality, autonomy, reciprocity – are preserved at all.” P.54
Eagleton has this irritating practice of reifying things that are actually processes. And of course, he gives them sinister origins and motivations. I guess that’s true of all critical theorists and Marxists and neo-Marxists.
In chapter 6 he writes “it has ended up, in effect, as a handful of individuals reviewing each other’s books. Criticism itself has become incorporated into the culture industry…“ “It has only been when criticism, in the active speaking of literature, emits a lateral message about the shape and destiny of a whole culture but it’s voice has compelled widespread attention.“
“Today, apart from its marginal role in reproducing the dominant social relations through the academies, it is almost entirely bereft of such a raison d’être.“ He then spends some time talking about the ideas of a critic by the name of Raymond Williams, whom I’ve never heard of.
The author sees the existence of criticism regardless of its origins as being fundamentally critical of and struggling against the absolute state. He ends the book by saying “modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state; unless it’s future is now defined as a struggle against the bourgeois state, it might have no future at all.“
I guess my question is do the critics have any standing? Why them? What makes them special? Their stance against the absolute state? What if the state is not yet absolutist? Is then the economic system their target?
It is ironic that as a Marxist he is critical of the absolute state. Perhaps his target is a Stalinist bureaucracy. After all, Eagleton is on the side of the collectivists. But there, the critic would be in a camp or a grave.
“The names of Addison and Steele signify the very essence of English compromise: that adroit blending of grace and gravitas, urbanity and morality, correction and consolidation could not fail to seduce a later bourgeois intelligentsia now spiritually severed from the industrial capitalism which had produced them.“ He likes these word oppositions.
“If Addison and Steele mark the moment of bourgeois respectability, they also signify the point at which the hitherto disreputable genre of journalism becomes legitimate.“
“What such a realm will then be unable to withstand is the inruption into it of social and political interests and palpable conflict with its own universal rational norms.
“Fiercely partisan, the Edinburgh soon provoked into countervailing existence the Tory Quarterly Review…“
“Criticism was now explicitly, unabashedly political…“
““The truth is“ Hunt lamented “the criticism itself, for the most part, is a nuisance and an impertinance: and no good-natured reflecting men would be critics, if it were not that there are worse.““
““…the growth of public opinion implies the fostering of it“”
“The critic is ideally the mirror but in fact the lamp: his role is becoming the ultimately untenable one of “expressing“ a public opinion he covertly or flagrantly manipulates.“
“Criticism, then, has become a locus of political contention rather than a terrine of cultural consensus…“
“The question now confronting criticism is simply this: how is it possible to be a critic at all if art is its own self grounded, self-validating truth, if social discourse is irremediably alienated, and if there is no audience to address in the first place? This ends chapter 2.
“Once the critic begins to fear that his interlocutors, left to their own devices, might wander off into gross ideological error, he must jettison any trust that the free markets of discourse, left to its own workings, will deliver the appropriate moral and intellectual goods.
“On Liberty, however, deploys the trust and in the principle of that sphere against the depressing reality of it. To trust the free play of discourse in such conditions is of course to take an enormous risk; but Mill is well aware of that error, ideological turmoil and political vulnerability may be the price one has to pay if the deep discursive structures of the bourgeois subject – freedom, equality, autonomy, reciprocity – are preserved at all.” P.54
Eagleton has this irritating practice of reifying things that are actually processes. And of course, he gives them sinister origins and motivations. I guess that’s true of all critical theorists and Marxists and neo-Marxists.
In chapter 6 he writes “it has ended up, in effect, as a handful of individuals reviewing each other’s books. Criticism itself has become incorporated into the culture industry…“ “It has only been when criticism, in the active speaking of literature, emits a lateral message about the shape and destiny of a whole culture but it’s voice has compelled widespread attention.“
“Today, apart from its marginal role in reproducing the dominant social relations through the academies, it is almost entirely bereft of such a raison d’être.“ He then spends some time talking about the ideas of a critic by the name of Raymond Williams, whom I’ve never heard of.
The author sees the existence of criticism regardless of its origins as being fundamentally critical of and struggling against the absolute state. He ends the book by saying “modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state; unless it’s future is now defined as a struggle against the bourgeois state, it might have no future at all.“
I guess my question is do the critics have any standing? Why them? What makes them special? Their stance against the absolute state? What if the state is not yet absolutist? Is then the economic system their target?
It is ironic that as a Marxist he is critical of the absolute state. Perhaps his target is a Stalinist bureaucracy. After all, Eagleton is on the side of the collectivists. But there, the critic would be in a camp or a grave.
July 20, 2022
This is not a book and more of an extended essay in six parts. I agree with the main nub of the argument and the plea of the writer to recover the place and role of criticism. My main beef with the book is it could have been better edited and more concise. One does not need so many quotes to make the point. After a while, it becomes laborious.
Some key quotes.
“Criticism, then, has the unwelcome choice of preserving a political content, thus gaining in social relevance what it loses in a partiality disruptive of the very public sphere it seeks to construct; or of assuming a transcendental standpoint beyond that sphere, thus safeguarding its integrity at the price of social marginality and intellectual nullity.”
“The twentieth century was to see the replacement of the Victorian periodical with the 'little magazine', which as with Eliot's Criterion was often enough self-consciously the organ of an elite. It is, ironically, in the modern age that criticism is able to rediscover one of its traditional roles; for the difficulty of the modernist writing associated with such reviews as the Criterion and the Egoist demands a labour of mediation and interpretation, the shaping of a readerly sensibility to receive such works, as the writing of a Dickens or Trollope did not. That mediation, however, is no longer to a broad middle-class readership, through journals which might exert influence on a majority of the ruling class; it remains more a transaction within academia than one between academy and society.”
Some key quotes.
“Criticism, then, has the unwelcome choice of preserving a political content, thus gaining in social relevance what it loses in a partiality disruptive of the very public sphere it seeks to construct; or of assuming a transcendental standpoint beyond that sphere, thus safeguarding its integrity at the price of social marginality and intellectual nullity.”
“The twentieth century was to see the replacement of the Victorian periodical with the 'little magazine', which as with Eliot's Criterion was often enough self-consciously the organ of an elite. It is, ironically, in the modern age that criticism is able to rediscover one of its traditional roles; for the difficulty of the modernist writing associated with such reviews as the Criterion and the Egoist demands a labour of mediation and interpretation, the shaping of a readerly sensibility to receive such works, as the writing of a Dickens or Trollope did not. That mediation, however, is no longer to a broad middle-class readership, through journals which might exert influence on a majority of the ruling class; it remains more a transaction within academia than one between academy and society.”
July 20, 2025
Ipinanganak ang kritisismo, o ang bersyon ng kritisismo para sa mga taga-Kanluran, mula sa pangangailangang patatagin ang kaisipang burges, at palawakin ang hanay ng gitnang-uring naniniwala sa unibersal at ideyal na mga katangian at kalikasan ng reyalidad. Gamit ang mga rebyu sa peryodiko, nagbigay-daan ang kritisismo sa bagong pamantayan ng ganda (nilalaman) at angkop (anyo) na paraan ng pagbasa ng panitikan. Mula rito, masasabing konserbatismo ang nasa ubod ng klasikong kritisismo.
Ngunit dahil sa kalikasan ng kapitalismo na gawing komoditI ang lahat ng bagay, ang tanging may mga akses sa materyal at mga nasa akademya lamang ang nakapagsisimula ng diskurso at diyalogo, nawawala ang saysay ng pagiging cultural at social act ng pagsulat kung tanging mga nasa akademya at kaburgesan lamang ang pag-uusap-usap tungkol sa pamantayan at pagtanggap sa dakilang mga sining ng ating mundo. Ang pagiging eksklusibo ng kritisismo ay nakatulong para isulong ng akademya, na malay man o hindi ay may gampanin sa pagpapatatag at pagwasak ng kasalukuyang ideolohiya o paraan ng pag-iisip, ang kanilang kaisipang burges.
Ngunit sa dulo, isinusulong ni Eagleton ang pagbabalik ng kritisismo at teorya sa pinagmulan nito: isang flaneur, tagamasid ng mga bagay-bagay at araw-araw na reyalidad. Sa ganitong pagbabalik, maiwawaksi ang lubhang pribadong kahulugan ng panitikang nakakiling at nakakulong sa mga -ismo. Ani Eagleton, hindi kailangang mag-sleepwalk ng flaneur, kailangang maglakad ng kritiko sa hanay ng mga marhinalisado, ng mga inaapi at binubusabos, habang nakakapit-bisig sa kabila’t nakataas naman ang kamao sa isa pa.
Ngunit dahil sa kalikasan ng kapitalismo na gawing komoditI ang lahat ng bagay, ang tanging may mga akses sa materyal at mga nasa akademya lamang ang nakapagsisimula ng diskurso at diyalogo, nawawala ang saysay ng pagiging cultural at social act ng pagsulat kung tanging mga nasa akademya at kaburgesan lamang ang pag-uusap-usap tungkol sa pamantayan at pagtanggap sa dakilang mga sining ng ating mundo. Ang pagiging eksklusibo ng kritisismo ay nakatulong para isulong ng akademya, na malay man o hindi ay may gampanin sa pagpapatatag at pagwasak ng kasalukuyang ideolohiya o paraan ng pag-iisip, ang kanilang kaisipang burges.
Ngunit sa dulo, isinusulong ni Eagleton ang pagbabalik ng kritisismo at teorya sa pinagmulan nito: isang flaneur, tagamasid ng mga bagay-bagay at araw-araw na reyalidad. Sa ganitong pagbabalik, maiwawaksi ang lubhang pribadong kahulugan ng panitikang nakakiling at nakakulong sa mga -ismo. Ani Eagleton, hindi kailangang mag-sleepwalk ng flaneur, kailangang maglakad ng kritiko sa hanay ng mga marhinalisado, ng mga inaapi at binubusabos, habang nakakapit-bisig sa kabila’t nakataas naman ang kamao sa isa pa.
April 21, 2019
An interesting read that starts as a detailed history of literary criticism- all the way back to Pope, Johnson and Addison - and goes up through to the modern day, cutting away at theories like semiotics and deconstruction, while also making a case for the continued relevance of criticism and how to make it useful again.
I read this while also reading Voltaire’s Bastards and the two have some ideas in common: compartmentalization and the obscuring of language that makes such criticism (and contemporary fiction) inaccessible to laypeople, and theories that seem to exist only to further themselves. As Eagleton says, every deconstruction theory paper begets another since there’s always more to deconstruct - so long as the journals don’t start printing blank pages.
All in all, a short but dense essay, interesting but it’s worth keeping a dictionary at arms length. Lit majors will get the most out of this, but i think anyone interested in criticism will get something from it.
I read this while also reading Voltaire’s Bastards and the two have some ideas in common: compartmentalization and the obscuring of language that makes such criticism (and contemporary fiction) inaccessible to laypeople, and theories that seem to exist only to further themselves. As Eagleton says, every deconstruction theory paper begets another since there’s always more to deconstruct - so long as the journals don’t start printing blank pages.
All in all, a short but dense essay, interesting but it’s worth keeping a dictionary at arms length. Lit majors will get the most out of this, but i think anyone interested in criticism will get something from it.
July 19, 2018
I have re-read this like 3 times already. But for some points i dont really get the meaning, and still confuses me.
But still, this is a good book to excercise my brains😂
But still, this is a good book to excercise my brains😂
Read
December 3, 2020Intro to marxist criticism. So readable.
April 28, 2022
Why he be rambling like that, cuz?
October 30, 2023
¿Yo? Materialista eagletoniana
August 1, 2025
“The role of the contemporary critic, then, is a traditional one . The point of the present essay is to recall criticism to its traditional role, not to invent some fashionable new function for it. For a new generation of critics in Western society, English Literature. is now an inherited label for a field within which many diverse preoccupations congregate : semiotics, psychoanalysis, film studies, cultural theory, the representation of gender, popular writing, and of course the conventionally valued writings of the past. These pursuits have no obvious unity beyond a concern with the symbolic processes of social life, and the social production of forms of subjectivity. Critics who find such pursuits modish and distastefully new-fangled are, as a matter of cultural history, mistaken. They represent a contemporary version of the most venerable topics of criticism, before it was narrowed and impoverished to the so-called literary canon. Moreover, it is possible to argue that such an inquiry might contribute in a modest way to our very survival. For it is surely becoming apparent that without a more profound understanding of such symbolic processes, through which political power is deployed, reinforced, resisted, at times subverted, we shall be incapable of unlocking the most lethal power struggles now confronting us . Modern criticism was born of a struggle against the absolutist state; unless its future is now defined as a struggle against the bourgeois state, it might have no future at all.”
The Function of Criticism (1984) by Terry Eagleton
The Function of Criticism (1984) by Terry Eagleton
February 6, 2016
Handy laging basahin si Eagleton, wala akong masyadong problema sa sinasabi niya. Sa technique at formal chenes nya lang ako may unting duda. I was thinking: too soft ba talaga itong si Eagleton, too soft dahil gustong dumistansya sa hardened tone o lexicon ng Marxist writing (mas pipiliin nya ang "better, more human society" kunwari kesa "socialism") at what explains this softness? Posturang Marxista lang ba sya -- speaking of "more humane" societies to come, kunwari progressive at forward-looking and mga litanya pero leaving enough vagueness para mamis-construe ang kanyang arguably socialist message? O Marxista syang well-intentioned naman ang evasion (aversion?) sa hardened slogans o big words? Petty na puna lang siguro ito. When you read him, siguro you'll feel it. Nandidiri rin sya sa exisiting na mga ganap.
September 9, 2021
A great thin book in a good translation even if I think it is an awkward situation to find "Paus" in the discussion about Tatler and Spectator. Well, it refers to "Pope" which means Alexander Pope instead of the title "Paus", 🙊
Beside, to make it more specific, I think the book's title is better to be translated as "Fungsi Kritik Sastra".
Beside, to make it more specific, I think the book's title is better to be translated as "Fungsi Kritik Sastra".
March 9, 2014
pure bullshit
September 15, 2014
O, of course eagleton rocks [/fangirl]
August 13, 2015
Why do the titles of Eagleton's books promise so much and give so little?
October 3, 2016
Interesting, but very difficult and not always worth the difficulty.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews