Literary and theoretical texts for all your Marxism needs.
Primary Literary Texts
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
"You shall not pass!" Who doesn't love a set of novels with its own film trilogy? Especially one that mixes class struggles with pointy ears, swords, and a Balrog? Supposedly inspired by the real h...
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (2008-2010)
Three books, four movies, lots of games. Like Lord of the Rings, this novel trilogy features teens fighting to the death in a computer-controlled arena. What's not to love? Of all recent fiction, y...
Divergent, by Veronica Roth (2011)
Post-apocalyptic Chicago and a rigid social structure based on character traits? Sounds like a Marxist field day to us. Here, we've got the usual fighting teens and the usual strife. The catch? Som...
A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams (1947)
If it's tension and distress you're after, this play (not to mention the 1951 movie based on it) is dripping with it. All the divisions are there: gender, sexuality, class, power. The scenes betwee...
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (1954)
If you like The Hunger Games, then here's a Nobel Prize winner doing it in black and white.In this novel, we've got a bunch of British schoolboys marooned on an island. What could possibly go wrong...
Primary Theoretical Texts
Keywords, by Raymond Williams (1976)
This is a short encyclopedia of the most common words used to describe literature, history, and society. Williams tries to be totally precise, giving lots of historical detail to show how all these...
Marxism and Literary Criticism, by Terry Eagleton (1976)
Clear and super concise (this baby is less than a hundred pages!), Eagleton gives us his own take on the Big Issues of Marxist literary theory. He's totally into the idea that Marxists do not actua...
Marxism and Literature, by Raymond Williams (1977)
In this book, Williams goes into way more detail than Eagleton. Williams was a generation older than Eagleton and isn't as sparkly of a writer, but you'll get more economics and history from him, i...
Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader, by Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne (1996)
Does what it says on the tin. This is an anthology of Marxist texts with nice little biographical intros. Read all this and you'll know if you want to wade into the hard stuff. What do the authors...
Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900, by Franco Moretti (1999)
Franco Moretti may be the hippest Marxist literary critic working today, and here he argues that the most important thing when you're studying literature is figuring out the big picture. Think of i...
The Political Unconscious, by Fredric Jameson (1981)
Jameson's the Big Daddy of Marxist theory these days. The guy's smart and wants you to know it, so don't expect him to just hand his ideas over without a fight. Even reading this introduction of th...