Eagleton was then a tutor in English at Wadham College. His earlier books had been more or less earnest works of Marxist literary criticism, but with Literary Theory he acquired a new critical persona. For although Literary Theory proclaimed itself to be an "Introduction", it was so only in the rather special sense that, for instance, being told at a party that the person you were about to meet was an alcoholic, a wife-beater, a fascist and a dotard might also count as an introduction. In five chapters, the dominant schools of literary criticism since the "rise of English" as a subject of academic study at the end of the 19th century were reviewed and each was found wanting. Do you enjoy close reading and think that great works of literature can possess moral power? If so, you are in the grip of a fairy-story invented to soothe "an uprooted, defensive intelligentsia who reinvented in literature what they could not locate in reality" (p. 47). Tempted by structuralism? Too "simple-minded" (p. 125). Exhilarated by the complexities of post-structuralism? Nothing more than "a hedonist withdrawal from history" (p. 150). Intrigued by psychoanalysis? An impossible position flanked by "discredited rationalism" and "intolerable scepticism" (p. 185). As Eagleton says towards the end, "This book is less an introduction than an obituary" (p. 204).

So, what is left? It is at this point that one realises that an even better title for this book would have been Literary Theory: A Sermon. Like a subtle preacher (his recent engagement with questions of religion is not surprising) Eagleton uses satire to soften up his reader for salvation, to which he points the way in a final chapter on "Political Criticism". "Literary theory", it seems, was just another convulsive shudder in the death throes of late capitalism. But suitably-enlightened students of literature could be the shock-troops in a new phase, not just of literary history, but of history itself.