Terry Eagleton's Divine Comedy

Abstract


 
 
 This essay reflects on the links between comedy and religion in Terry Eagle- ton’s writing since 2000. It proposes that religious thought provides the same kind of occasion and imperative to take comedy seriously as Marxist theory had done earlier in Eagleton’s career. The essay argues that the connecting principle between Marxism, Catholicism, criticism and comedy is the body, especially in its conjoining of absurdity and abasement. It proposes that comedy is best regarded as the enactment of the fantasy of cognitive omnipotence, or the abstract will-to-enjoyment in constant search for occasions. We therefore likely joke for the same reason as we pray, for the pleasure of getting above ourselves, which includes the gratifying prospect of seeing ourselves tumbling off the ladder, which might be a slapstick translation of the felix culpa, or fortunate fall. If Eagleton’s critical comedy is officially offered as a salutory foretaste of the pleasure of redemption, its gratifications seem always also to lie down where all the ladders start, in suffering and finitude.