Book Cover -- Title -- Contents -- PREFACE TO THE ROUTLEDGE CLASSICS EDITION -- PREFACE -- Literature and history -- Base and superstructure -- Literature and superstructure -- Literature and ideology -- Form and content -- Form and ideology -- Lukcs and literary form -- Goldmann and genetic structuralism -- Pierre Macherey and 'decentred' form -- The writer and commitment -- Lenin, Trotsky and commitment -- Marx, Engels and commitment -- The reflectionist theory -- Literary commitment and English Marxism -- The author as producer -- Walter Benjamin -- Bertolt Brecht and 'epic' theatre -- Form and production -- Realism or modernism? -- Consciousness and production -- NOTES -- SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.;Is Marx relevant any more? Why should we care what he wrote? What difference could it make to our reading of literature? Terry Eagleton, one of the foremost critics of our generation, has some answers in this wonderfully clear and readable analysis. Sharp and concise, it is, without doubt, the most important work on literary criticism that has emerged out of the tradition of Marxist philosophy and social theory since the nineteenth century.