English Novel Intro C

Written by one of the world’s leading literary theorists, this book provides a wide-ranging, accessible and humorous introduction to the English novel from Daniel Defoe to the present day.

• Covers the works of major authors, including Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce.
• Distils the essentials of the theory of the novel.
• Follows the model of Eagleton’s hugely popular Literary Theory: An Introduction (Second Edition, 1996).

In his introduction to the English novel, Eagleton (cultural theory, U. of Manchester) leads his students on a march through Britain's canonical writers, beginning with Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift and ending with Virginia Wolf. As he did in his popular introduction to literary theory, Eagleton summarizes the arguments of prominent theorists succinctly and cogently. He explains his choice of authors by stating that they are the novelists students will most likely encounter, but in his conclusion, Eagleton contends that England's era of major literary achievement ended after the First World War along with the collapse of major liberal ideals, such as reason, progress and civility. He sees in their place a narrowing of interest among authors to the individual and parochial. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Terry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2003), The Idea of Culture (2000), Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1999), Literary Theory: An Introduction (Second Edition, 1996) and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), all published by Blackwell Publishing.