Ebook: Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature

The three essays in this volume were originally published as individual pamphlets by the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry, Nothern Ireland. Founded in 1980 as a theatre company, Field Day has evolved as a publisher concerned with the typically Irish blend of political and cultural (mainly literary) forces which requires fresh analysis in view of the existing Irish political crisis. As a result, Field Day has published a series of pamphlets, in groups of three, to which the three essays printed here are the most recent contribution. Each of the essays deals with a different aspect of nationalism and the role of cultural production as a force in understanding the aftermath of colonization. In his essay, Terry Eagleton identifies two decolonizing stages: the achievement of national autonomy and personal autonomy. Frederic Jameson discusses the problematic relationship between the Third World and the "first world". Edward Said focuses on the poetry of Yeats and the role it played in the "liberationist" movement of decolonization.

Terry Eagleton is John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester. He is the author of more than fifty books in the fields of literary theory, postmodernism, politics, ideology, and religion. His recent publications include How to Read a Poem (2006), The English Novel (2004), Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic (2003), The Idea of Culture(2000), Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1999), and The Illusions of Postmodernism (1996), all published by Wiley-Blackwell.