Terry Eagleton draws on analytical philosophy, something that literary theorists have tended to resist, to illuminate what literature is, and to ask what theory can legitimately say about it. Written with his characteristic wit, verve and insight, The Event of Literature marks a new chapter in the developing thought of our pre-eminent literary theorist. ‘If I were to be immodest,’ he remarks in his preface, ‘I would say that [this] book offers a reasonable account of what literature (at least for the present) actually means, as well as drawing attention for the first time to what almost all literary theories have in common. But I am not immodest, so I will not say so.’

Yale University Press | Hardback 256 pp. |ISBN: 9780300178814