Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Field Day began as a theater project in Ireland in 1980 but later produced an iconoclastic pamphlet series as well as the definitive Field Day Anthology of Irish Literature (LJ 12/91). The "Critical Conditions" series was started in 1996 to publish longer but equally provocative studies. Eagleton's ten essays in this fifth volume of the series, offering "Field Day Essays and Monographs," cover Irish and English history, philosophy, and literature from the 18th century to the present. Throughout, Eagleton tries to counteract "two kinds of narrowness" in traditional Irish studies. Although one essay does discuss Yeats's poetics, Eagleton avoids "the Irish literary pantheon" while including a fascinating biographical essay on Frederick Ryan, a contemporary of Yeats and Joyce now little known. Eagleton (Thomas Warton Professor of English, Oxford) also refuses to shape his work to the current "postmodern agenda," and the result is a collection of memorable insights into this important literary field. For academic and specialized collections.‘Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

Covering the early 18th century through the mid-20th, these ten essays offer an original and comprehensive interpretation of meaty aspects of Irish history, literature, philosophy, linguistic development, social theory, and a good deal more. Readers who know the brilliance of the author (Oxford Univ., UK) will find him here at his high-powered best, the thought of the world seemingly at his fingertips. Eagleton's focus goes from closeup (Yeat's poetic form and its difference from Eliot's; Thomas Moore's self-conflicted verse; the point of Beckett's apparent pointlessness) to wide-angle (Augustan concepts of "sensibility" and "benevolence"; Irish novelists from Maria Edgeworth to Francis Stuart as "cultural emigres"; Gaelic grouchiness in the work of Steele, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Burke). Eagleton enthusiastically reclaims poet William Dunk and socialist ideologue Frederick Ryan from near oblivion, and his long title essay--which praises John Toland's philosophic thought as a challenge to Berkeleyan idealism--glitters with sweep and authority. The concluding essay chides revisionist critics for extremism but ends by admitting its necessity in order to achieve human freedom. One can make only a poor pass at suggesting the depth, wit, learning, and elegance of Eagleton's new work. All upper-division undergraduates through faculty should have access to this title. R. J. Thompson; Canisius College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Terry Eagleton received a Ph.D from Cambridge University. He is a literary critic and a writer. He has written about 50 books including Shakespeare and Society, Criticism and Ideology, The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Literary Theory, The Illusions of Postmodernism, Why Marx Was Right, The Event of Literature, and Across the Pond: An Englishman's View of America. He wrote a novel entitled Saints and Scholars, several plays including Saint Oscar, and a memoir entitled The Gatekeeper. He is also the chair in English literature in Lancaster University's department of English and creative writing.

(Bowker Author Biography)