Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Kenneth Asher

Critical Essay by Kenneth Asher

SOURCE: Asher, Kenneth. “T. S. Eliot and the New Criticism.” Essays in Literature 20, no. 2 (fall 1993): 292-309.

In the following essay, Asher explores the relationship between the New Critics and T. S. Eliot.

Nearly everyone who considers the history of modern literary criticism regards T. S. Eliot as one of the progenitors of the New Criticism. Typically, it will be pointed out that Eliot's theory of impersonality paved the way for the formalism of the New Critics and that his elevation of Donne and the metaphysical poets led to the New Critical valorization of wit and irony. Yet these lines of connection, accurate enough on the most general level, fail to take account of the substantial tension between Eliot and major New Critics. The most striking evidence of dissociation is Eliot's own unequivocal rejection of the notion that he helped father the New Criticism, or had any great...
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