Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this brilliant critique, Terry Eagleton explores the origins and emergence of postmodernism, revealing its ambivalences and contradictions. Above all he speaks to a particular kind of student, or consumer, of popular "brands" of postmodern thought.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• 1 Beginnings
• 2 Ambivalences
• 3 Histories
• 4 Subjects
• 5 Fallacies
• 6 Contradictions
• Notes
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Eagleton (English, Oxford Univ.) has accomplished something quite remarkable in this book. He manages to be entertaining as well as intellectually rigorous and challenging. Indeed, this is a funny book--Theodor Adorno meets Oscar Wilde. As anyone who has read a recent work of cultural criticism can assert, this is no mean feat. More important, Eagleton consistently subjects the fundamental tenets of postmodernism to a thorough and somehow charming interrogation. With grace and wit, he raises issues of such depth that he forces one to reconsider many of the hitherto tacit theoretical presuppositions of postmodernism. This book will especially make one rethink the political nature of postmodernism. This is one of those rare and wonderful theory books that one can discuss heatedly with one's colleagues and teach in an undergraduate course. Highly recommended. General; upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. S. Barnett Central Connecticut State University

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)