SOURCE: A review of Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature, in World Literature Today, Vol. 65, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 371-72.

In the following review, Dasenbrock offers an unfavorable assessment of Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature, citing Jameson's contribution as a “dismal failure.”

Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature is a reprinting of three pamphlets published by Field Day in Northern Ireland. These pamphlets differ from others published in the series because the three authors—Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said—are all well-known literary theorists who are neither Irish nor critics particularly expert in Irish literature. The collection therefore represents an effort at connecting a specific project in Irish culture to both the explosion of postcolonial literature in English and the recent ferment of Marxist political criticism.

Of these two connections, I think the first is quite important, and both the study of modern Irish literature and the study of postcolonial literature can only...