Marxism and Form. 20th Century Dialectical Theories of Literature

For more than thirty years, Fredric Jameson has been one of the most productive, wide-ranging, and distinctive literary theorists in the United States and the Anglophone world. "Marxism and Form" provided a pioneering account of the work of the major European Marxist theorists - T. W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukacs, and Jean-Paul Sartre - work that was, at the time, largely neglected in the English-speaking world. Through penetrating readings of each theorist, Jameson developed a critical mode of engagement that has had tremendous influence. He provided a framework for analyzing the connection between art and the historical circumstances of its making - in particular, how cultural artifacts distort, repress, or transform their circumstances through the abstractions of aesthetic form. Jameson´s presentation of the critical thought of this Hegelian Marxism provided a stark alternative to the Anglo-American tradition of empiricism and humanism. It would later provide a compelling alternative to poststructuralism and deconstruction as they became dominant methodologies in aesthetic criticism.One year after "Marxism and Form", Princeton published Jameson´s "The Prison-House of Language (1972)", which provided a thorough historical and philosophical description of formalism and structuralism. Both books remain central to Jameson´s main intellectual legacy: describing and extending a tradition of Western Marxism in cultural theory and literary interpretation.