Ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact, and so little understood as a concept, as it is today. In this now classic work, originally written for both students and for those already familiar with the debates on ideology, Terry Eagleton unravels the concepts many definitions, and explores the concept's torturous history from the Enlightenment to the present.The book provides lucid accounts of the thought of key Marxist thinkers, as well as of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and the various post-structuralists. Now updated in the light of current theoretical debates, this essential text by one of our most important contemporary critics clarifies a notoriously confused subject.Ideology is core reading for students and teachers of literature and politics.