Eaglet’ons Ideological Theory And Its Significance

Terry Eagleton is one of the most outstanding literary theorists, Marxist theorist ofthe world. Though Eagleton’s literature is highly quoted by western scholars, the numberof the thematic researches on them is small. Western countries have already startedresearch on Eagleton’s theories, but In the field of domestic academic, Eagleton’s bookshave been translated into Chinese include:”Aesthetic Ideology”，“post-modernistillusion” and “Marxism and Literary Criticism” in less than ten, Only about one-third ofhis books. Although the research resources is limited, but we can still find the basicframework of the Eagleton theories of ideology from the translated books. Relatively, thedomestic situation in our country than in the western is backward.Eagleton’s theory of ideology is the core of his philosophy. He starts from hisliterary criticism, and form his theory of ideology; then he starts from the theory ofideology to improve and enrich his theory of literary criticism. This paper focuses onsorting out the theory of ideology of Eagleton, making some assessments of his theory,and providing a meaningful basis for the study of ideology.This paper is divided into three parts, focuses primarily on Terry Eagleton’stheoretical origins of the theory of ideology, Eagleton’s definition of the area of ideology,The relationship between literature and ideology, the value of Eagleton’s theory and itslimited.The main work of the first part is picking up the source of ideas Eagleton form Marxand Engels, Lukacs and Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and Althusser’s thought ofideology, to pave the way to sort out the theory of his theory of ideology; and tointroduce the concept and definition of Eagleton’s "ideology".The main work of the second part is elaborating Eagleton’s theory of ideology fromliterary dimension. Is literature ideology? What kind of relationship between literatureand ideology? What kind of relationship between literature criticism and ideology? Thesecond part will solve these problems.The main work of the third part is Objectively evaluating Eagleton’s theory ofideology, based on his providing a new starting point for studying the theory of ideology of Marx, to put forward the shortcomings and limitations of his theory, to find a betterentry point for studying Eagleton’s and Marx’s theory of ideology.