ABSTRACT

We should, at this point, stress that Althusser is not primarily a literary critic. He has dealt with matters of literary theory more or less en passant purely in order to sketch out the implications of his more general theoretical position for this area of debate within Marxism. Nevertheless, his comments on literature have assumed a more than ordinary importance. Although they do not amount to a developed and sustained theoretical position in themselves, they do provide the general theoretical background against which the more detailed work of Pierre Macherey and Terry Eagleton must be viewed.