The End of English? (1991)

Document Type : Keynote Address

Author

Oxford University

Abstract

Terry Eagleton’s keynote address to the first International Symposium on Comparative Literature at the Department of English Language and Literature at Cairo University in 1989, was a variation on an article published in 1986 where he had debated the decline of English studies in the context of post-imperialism and postmodernism. In his keynote address, Eagleton continues the discussion, this time from a different entry point that intentionally focuses on the birth of the academic discipline of English literature in late 19th century England as an ideological project that aimed at establishing a national identity that would in turn create social and political harmony at home. This national heritage project also had an international edge whereby English literature was deployed as a form of cultural hegemony in the Empire’s attempt to subdue national cultures. The beginning of the 20th century, however, as Eagleton explains, brought on four detrimental challenges to the thriving discipline then: the First World War, the emergence of modernism, the end of the empire, and the birth of postmodernism. These four challenges, according to Eagleton, resulted in disrupting the centrality of the discipline, shaking the foundations of the literary tradition, and internationalizing it. In short, the discipline lost its status as the focus shifted from the Empire to the margin.
Foreword by Mounira Soliman.

Keywords

Published in the first volume of the Symposium Proceedings: Images of Egypt in Twentieth Century Literature, ed. Hoda Gindi, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University (1991), pp. 1-10. 

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