T. S. Eliot Summary

Eliot, Thomas Stearns(1888–1964) Thomas Stearns Eliot is best known as a poet and literary critic (he received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948), but his work in social and cultural theor... Read more

Biography EssayT. S. Eliot is one of the giants of modern literature, highly distinguished as poet, literary critic, dramatist, and editor/publisher. In 1910-1911, while still a student, he wrote "The... Read more

"In ten years' time," Edmund Wilson wrote in Axel's Castle, "Eliot has left upon English poetry a mark more unmistakable than any other poet writing in the English language." Recognized as the most im... Read more

The impact of T. S. Eliot on modern literature is an almost unique literary phenomenon. An American by birth and education, Eliot came to dominate English literary life with a completeness rivaled o... Read more

No name is more closely associated with the course of modern poetry and literary criticism than that of T. S. Eliot, for no writer has had a greater hand in shaping the sensibilities, expectations, an... Read more

Critical Essay by Harry Puckett Almost every poem Eliot wrote is dominated by one or more traditional epistemological concerns—knowledge and belief, memory and perception, forgetting, recognit... Read more

Critical Essay by Christopher Clausen As a major poet T. S. Eliot began in the Waste Land and ended at Little Gidding. That both places are associated with chapels is no accident: even in the depths ... Read more

Critical Essay by Samuel Hynes [The] war book above all others in the 'twenties was The Waste Land, and no account of the forces that formed the 'thirties generation would be accurate t... Read more

Critical Essay by Arnold P. Hinchliffe The English verse dramatists sought to restore verse plays to their central place in the English theatre. T. S. Eliot began with certain advantages over poets l... Read more

Critical Essay by Calvin Bedient The Eliot of 'Gerontion' and 'The Hollow Men' … is a quasi-Absentist, his protagonists the seeming victims of an incapacitated fait... Read more

Critical Essay by Jack Behar The common observation of the coldly apocalyptic gesture in Eliot, the intoning of favored set phrases ("Unreal City"), the self-concealing reverie that pro... Read more

Critical Essay by Grover Smith Eliot's experiment with drama in Sweeney Agonistes constituted a false start. Not until 1934 did another such effort come to light, and that was so unfortunate&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Sidney Poger Eliot's interest in Dante and his use of allusions to Dante in The Waste Land are too well known to need further documentation. However, there is one allusion wh... Read more

Critical Essay by Sister Madeleine Kisner [Eliot's pessimism] finds its complement in the historical disillusion of our epoch…. It is because the dilemma of man's true significan... Read more

Critical Essay by F. R. Leavis How can a book of criticism be at once so distinguished and so unimportant? The question is the more worth asking because the author of [On Poets and Poetry] was at one... Read more

Critical Essay by Austin Warren Eliot's theory of poetry falls neither into didacticism nor into the opposite heresies of imagism and echolalia. The real 'purity' of poetryȁ... Read more

Critical Essay by George Watson The question sounds eminently reasonable, but remains unanswerable: what is revolutionary in the criticism of T. S. Eliot? Everyone—except apparently Eliot hims... Read more

Critical Essay by Edward Lobb The most frequently noted feature of Eliot's prose style is that it combines assertion and reticence to a remarkable degree. Particularly in essays from Eliot�... Read more

Critical Essay by Edmund Wilson As a critic, Eliot occupies to-day a position of distinction and influence equal in importance to his position as a poet. His writings have been comparatively brief an... Read more

Critical Essay by S. IchiyÉ Hayakawa [It is] disconcerting for the ardent student of Eliot to find, in [After Strange Gods], no indication of a richer spiritual life as the result of his conve... Read more

Critical Essay by John Crowe Ransom [Eliot] uses his historical studies for the sake of literary understanding, and therefore might be called a historical critic. If the title conferred upon him seem... Read more

Critical Essay by Ruth C. Child Now that some thirty years of controversy have passed, it is possible to consider the early critical work of T. S. Eliot in fair perspective and to attempt an assessme... Read more

Hysteria, Eliot's short discussion of a speaker's descriptions and reactions to his woman companion's laughter, examines loosely the seductive quality of hysteria. Conceivably influenced by Freud's ps... Read more

In "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," T. S. Eliot reveals the silent insecurity of a man, for whom the passing of time indicates the loss of virility and confidence. Throughout the poem, Prufrock... Read more