| Abstract: | Terry Eagleton's critical works have been under multiple influences from various critics and theorists both at home and abroad, which have been recognized and discussed in details in some relevant studies. However, another source of influence, the historical studies by Perry Anderson, has never been identified, much less examined up to the present day. The paper attempts to argue that, Perry Anderson's insightful critical accounts of the English Revolution and the particularities of English capitalism shaped to some extent Eagleton's fundamental view of the history of English literary criticism, and provided him with an important socio-historical framework for reference to examine the inner connection between critical practice and real politics. Actually, Eagleton's illuminating analyses of the cultural conservatism hidden in modern English literary criticism was greatly indebted to Anderson's convincing explanation for the political conservatism explicit in modern English society. The paper also suggests that their works could be used for explaining an often-neglected phenomenon in the 18th and 19th English classical novels: unlike their counterparts of the same periods in major Euro-continental countries, they tend to avoid severely criticizing let alone completely negating the aristocratic thoughts and ruling at home. |
