ABSTRACT
The critique of the position which sees character as the source of meaning and action comes from a wider and more ideological perspective than that of structuralism alone, and structuralism itself has more to offer than insights about character and action. In the general discourse of the electronic media, for instance, it is often considered that ideology and bias are one and the same thing, and that ideology and ‘common sense’ can be set against each other. Robert Leeson led the attack on the application to children’s fiction of the then prevailing British tradition of adult literary criticism. Marxist literary criticism analyses literature in the light of prevailing economic class conflict in capitalist society. Terry Eagleton and Catherine Belsey are among the major critics of the Leavisite tradition, identifying its liberal humanist roots and analysing its escapist response to the materialism of bourgeois capitalism.
