We have all wondered about the meaning of life. Is there an answer? Is it up to us? Or is the question a bogus one? Terry Eagleton takes a witty, stimulating look at this most compelling of questions - and proposes his own answer.

Terry Eagleton occupies a unique position in the English-speaking world. He is not only a productive literary theorist, but also a novelist and playwright. This title includes interviews that cover both his life and the development of his thought and politics. It is suitable for those interested in the evolution of radical politics and modernism.

Terry Eagleton occupies a unique position in the English-speaking world. He is not only a productive literary theorist, but also a novelist and playwright. This title includes interviews that cover both his life and the development of his thought and politics. It is suitable for those interested in the evolution of radical politics and modernism.

A savage, yet often comic, indictment of a society rotten to the core, this is one of Dickens' most ambitious novels, with a range that extends from the drawing rooms of the aristocracy to the poorest of London slums.

Addresses developments in literary studies, including 'the growth of a kind of anti-theory', and the idea that literary theory has been institutionalized.

Offers an account of religion and politics and contains topics that range from the Holy Spirit to the history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers.

Terry Eagleton demythologises the Irish, their culture and their economy in this hilarious guide for anyone who visits the Emerald Isle. He answers the kind of questions that most people would be too polite to ask.'

Focuses on the question of ethics. Providing insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, this work examines ethical theories through the framework of Jacques Lacan's categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, measuring them against the 'richer' ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Describes that cultural theory must start thinking ambitiously - not so that it can hand the West its legitimation, but so that it can seek to make sense of the grand narratives in which it is embroiled.

Presents a wide-ranging and humorous introduction to the English novel from Daniel Defoe to the present day. This book distils the essentials of the theory of the novel. It covers the works of major authors, including Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

Famed as a wit and bon viveur, Oscar Wilde lived up to his reputation. This selection of plays, poems and prose writings, introduced by Terry Eagleton, includes The Importance of Being Earnest , Lady Windermere's Fan , The Picture of Dorian Gray , The Critic as an Artist and Apologia .

Offers an examination of poetic form and its relation to content. This book takes a wide range of poems since the Renaissance and submits them to illuminating closes analysis. It discusses the work of major poets, including John Milton, John Keats, and Robert Frost. It includes a glossary of poetic terms.

Part of Radical Thinkers series, this work presents key texts by philosophers and thinkers.

Without doubt the most important work on literary criticism that has emerged out of the tradition of Marxist philosophy and social theory since the 19th century.

Designed to give students a sense of the historical formation of a Marxist literary tradition, this title offers fresh ways of reading Marxism, literature, theory, and the social possibilities of writing. It also includes an essay on 'Reading Marxist Literary Theory', exploring the complex relations between Marx's writings and Marxism.

Providing a comprehensive study of tragedy, this book deals with both theory and practice. It explores the idea of the tragic in the novel, examining such writers as Melville, Hawthorne, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Manzoni, Goethe and Mann, as well as English novelists.

Focuses on discriminating different meanings of culture, as a way of introducing the debates around it. This book offers a critique of postmodern 'culturalism', arguing instead for a more complex relation between Culture and Nature, and trying to retrieve the importance of such concepts as human nature from a non-naturalistic perspective.