Marxist Criticism

I had no idea what the history was behind Marxist Criticism, let alone what it was. I found it very interesting to learn about all the thinkers of the era like Adorno, Lukacs, and Bahktin. The fact that Marx and thinkers like him could not "think of aesthetic matters as being distinct and independent from such things as politics, economics, and history" baffled me. While works of art can be satirical and influenced by economic and political happenings, they are, in my opinion, entirely different beings. However, the concept of the alienation of the worker resulting in the destruction of the arts (pg. 381-82) is something I had never heard of or thought about before, but it interested me greatly and seemed to have some truth behind it. After all, how could those who produce items on a massive scale retain any sort of identity or deviation for what it is that they create for themselves? I do agree with Adorno in his attack on Lukacs' "dogmatic rejection of nonrealist modern literature." Art is indeed a separate being from science, though it may be influenced to some small or great degree by our attainment of new knowledge.

Eagleton makes an interesting analysis of Wuthering Heights, but it seems that much of what the author has to say, we had already discussed in class to a certain extent. Heathcliff's relationship (or lack thereof) to the family, and Hindley's resulting spite for the foreign boy, Catherine's double-standard-lifestyle, substituting love for social status, and Heathcliff's revenge for the years of "arbitrary love," heartbreak, and estrangement from his adoptive family. It all sounds vaguely familiar...Either way, I definitely learned a few things from this section of the book, both about the complex network of relationships in Wuthering Heights and the process that is Marxist Criticism.