Walter Benjamin

This momentous study of Benjamin''s critical practice marks a sea change in Eagleton''s thought. Its goal is not merely to contemplate Benjamin''s approach to language, history, and art but to chart a dynamic new course for contemporary socialist criticism. To do this, Eagleton brushes Benjamin''s Trauerspiel against seventeenth-century British literature, tests his concept of the ''aura'' against Freud and Lacan, and undertakes his most sustained engagement with Derrida and the political crossroads of deconstruction.