The Rape of Clarissa: Writing, Sexuality and Class Struggle in Samuel Richardson

by Terry Eagleton

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Genres: Literary Criticism, Books About Books

109 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Widely 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.

Reviews

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book is very well structured and that its value lies, not necessarily in the detailed content of Eagleton's argument, but rather in its indirect exposition of how Literature goes much deeper and is much more complex than the simple words that have been written down.

[S. A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Terry Eagleton. You don't have to agree with him, but the writing often better than what he's discussing.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of really interesting food for thought here, although I've got to be honest my brain just sort of switches off at Freudian criticism, even after studying it. I think here there's some points I liked, but it was also drawing on elements of theory that I don't really buy for a lot of the Freudian sections. Still, overall a good read, I learned some interesting things about Richardson's model of literary production, and I appreciated that there was humour in this! It's not something I've come across a lot in literary criticism, so it was fun to have a few jokes alongside the more serious points.

[Morgan Grantwood]

So much better than the actual book.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Marcus · Rating 1 out of 5]

An account of how one of the most bourgeois writers around was actually anti-bourgeois where Anna Howe even gets roped in as a Marxist feminist. This is a typical deterministic and predictable Marxist-Freudian response to the novel.

[Subashini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really good insights into sexuality and class. But relies on too much Freud for some of the discussion on Clarissa's interiority and that vastly unknowable, utterly dark and gloomy place (it might as well be another planet) called Female Desire.

[avigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

so far saucy and sharp and readable (in some ways more so than its subject maaybe!)

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I'm not really up for psychoanalytic or Marxist criticism, Eagleton has an interesting take on what makes Clarissa tick, and a bold style that isn't afraid of confrontation.