In The Task of the Critic, Matthew Beaumont compiles fourteen official interviews conducted with Eagleton since the 1980s, interweaving these with new, original and comprehensive interviews to provide readers with a contemporary frame through which to view his thought. Opening with a preface by Eagleton, the conversations narrate not only his own intellectual development but that of the Left over almost half a century, tying his recent return to religious themes with his intellectual formation on the Catholic Left in the 1960s and to the theological interests of influential thinkers like Zizek and Badiou. This volume will appeal not only to those with a specific interest in Eagleton himself and in the fate of the Left, but also to those interested in the trajectories of Anglo-American literary theory in a digestible, stimulating format.