Marxism and Form:

Twentieth-Century

Dialectical Theories

of Literature

Fredric Jameson

For more than thirtyyears, Fredric Jameson

has been one of the mostproductive, wide-ranging,and distinctive literarytheorists in the UnitedStates and the Anglo-phone world. Marxismand Form provided a pio-neering account of thework of the major Euro-

pean Marxist theorists—T. W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, HerbertMarcuse, Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, and Jean-Paul Sartre—workthat was, at the time, largely neglected in the English-speakingworld. Through penetrating readings of each theorist, Jamesondeveloped a critical mode of engagement that has had tremendousinfluence. He provided a framework for analyzing the connectionbetween art and the historical circumstances of its making—inparticular, how cultural artifacts distort, repress, or transformtheir circumstances through the abstractions of aesthetic form.

Jameson’s presentation of the critical thought of this HegelianMarxism provided a stark alternative to the Anglo-American tra-dition of empiricism and humanism. It would later provide acompelling alternative to poststructuralism and deconstructionas they became dominant methodologies in aesthetic criticism.

One year after Marxism and Form, Princeton published Jame-son’s The Prison-House of Language (), which provided athorough historical and philosophical description of formalismand structuralism. Both books remain central to Jameson’s mainintellectual legacy: describing and extending a tradition of West-ern Marxism in cultural theory and literary interpretation.

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