The Idea of Culture Terry Eagleton Terry Eagleton, born in 1943, is an English literary theorist and critic.

He has written over 40 books, and one of his latest is The Idea of Culture, published in 2000, which promises to be an important addition to the field of cultural studies. This book focuses on discriminating different meanings of culture, as a way of introducing to the general reader the contemporary debates around it. In the book, the author provides a discussion of the idea of culture. Culture is said to be one of the two or three most complex words in the English language. The author shows how culture is a concept that derives from nature. However, culture alters nature. Nature produces culture which changes nature. The author launches a critique of postmodern culturalism, arguing about complex relation between Culture and Nature, and he tries to retrieve the importance of such concepts. He sees a need for a much more nuanced relationship between nature and culture, between culture and its material forms. Placing the notion of culture in historical, philosophical, and political context, the author describes the emergence of today's mass culture, with its perceived threat to traditional values. To illustrate the changing meaning of culture, he notes the views of many different thinkers. He also makes it clear that concepts of culture are most always connected to discussions of power, authority and government, and that culture has assumed a great political importance. However, Eagleton implies that while we are today trapped in between too wide and too narrow notions of culture, this might actually be our greatest strength, provided that we accomplish the necessary reflexive reversal, giving culture the place it deserves.