Just to be clear, the simplest gloss on Eagleton's landmark essay (it's really too short to be a book) is that it's a takedown of belles lettres-style criticism

Just to be clear, the simplest gloss on Eagleton's landmark essay (it's really too short to be a book) is that it's a takedown of belles lettres-style criticism. Loosely speaking, Eagleton is best known for Marxist literary theory (dialectical materialism). [Edit: removed html-style tags]