T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

A selective list of literary criticism for the poet, playwright, and essayist T.S. Eliot, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Web Sites

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Introduction & lighter reading

"T.S. Eliot." An encyclopedia-type article on T.S. Eliot, covers his poetry and drama, themes, reception, and more, from the Poetry Foundation.

"T.S. Eliot." The Modern American Poetry site (U of Illinois) re-prints excerpts from reputable literary criticism of the following poems: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gernonition, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, The journey of the Magi, Burnt Norton. An extended biography of T. S. Eliot by Ronald Bush, at Modern American Poetry.

"T.S. Eliot." A brief introduction to Eliot: "With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world." Academy of American Poets.

"T.S. Eliot." Poetry Archive. Directors, Andrew Motion & Richard Carrington.

Kermode, Frank. A review of Peter Ackroyd's biography of T. S. Eliot in The Guardian, 9/27/84.

Raine, Craig. "Private passions: Although the idea of a life not fully lived is central to his poetry, T.S. Eliot was not the dry old stick of his self-caricature. His personal story was full of quiet drama, and even recklessness." The Guardian, 1/6/07.

Thormählen, Marianne. A substantial introduction to T. S. Eliot from the Literary Encyclopedia, 3/30/01.

Journal rekindles debate on whether T. S. Eliot was anti-Semitic by John Sanford, Stanford Report, 9 April 2003.

Literary criticism

Alderman, Nigel. "'Where are the eagles and the trumpets?': the strange case of Eliot's missing quatrains." Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 1993.

Altieri, Charles. "Theory of Emotions in Eliot's Poetics." Altieri's web site.

Brand, Clinton. "The voice of this Calling: the enduring legacy of T.S. Eliot." How T.S. Eliot became "the man" for political conservatives. Modern Age, Fall 2003.

Brlek, Tomislav "T.S. Eliot's Notion of Culture." TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 15 (2003).

Bromwich, David. Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry (U of Chicago P 2001). Publisher's web site.

Bush, Ronald. A review of Bush's T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style and also of Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Criticism by David Spurr. Reviewed by Grover Smith in American Literature 57 (March 1985).

Bush, Ronald. Two reviews: of Bush's T. S. Eliot: The Modernist in History; and of T. S. Eliot: Encounters with Reality, by Sati Chatterjee. Reviewed by Rod Beecham. The Review of English Studies 44 (Nov., 1993).

Chandran, K Narayana. "Phantoms of the mind: T.S. Eliot's 'To Walter de la Mare,'" Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 1997.

Childs, Donald J. Publisher's page for Childs' Modernism and Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration (Cambridge UP 2001) [Virginia Woolf, W.B. Yeats].

Chinitz, David. "T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide." First page of article only. PMLA 110 (Mar., 1995).

Clark, Carlton. "'Such a Vision of the Street as the Street Hardly Understands': Jonathan Swift, T. S. Eliot, and the Anti-Pastoral." Clark analyzes four poems about morning in the city, three by Eliot and one by Swift. EESE, April 2000.

Cuda, Anthony. "T.S. Eliot's etherized patient." Writes Cuda, "this essay examines the changing ways in which Eliot envisions physical and spiritual passivity and the tremendous pressure that his inquiry into paralysis and surrender exerts on his understanding of the human soul." Twentieth Century Literature, Winter 2004

Donoghue, Denis. "T. S. Eliot and the Poem Itself." Donoghue discusses his own response and those of other noted critics to Eliot's poetry. Partisan Review Jan. 2000.

Eagleton, Terry. "Nudge-Winking." "The Criterion, T.S. Eliot’s periodical, ran from shortly after the First World War to the very eve of World War Two. Or, if one prefers, from one of Eliot’s major bouts of depression to another. The two time-schemes are, in fact, related." A review of Jason Harding's The 'Criterion': Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Interwar Britain (Oxford UP). London Review of Books (19 September 2002).

Ellmann, Maud. A review of Ellman's The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Reviewed by Ronald Bush, Modern Language Studies 19 (Summer 1989).

Fleissner, R.F. "T. S. Eliot and Anti-Semitism." Fleissner defends T. S. Eliot from criticism that he was anti-semitic. Contemporary Review, Dec. 1999.

Fluet, Lisa. "Modernism and disciplinary history: On H. G. Wells and T. S. Eliot." Twentieth Century Literature, Fall, 2004

Glaser, Brian. "A Hegelian Reading of T.S. Eliot's Negativity," Cercles 12 (2005).

Johnson, Loretta Lucido. "T. S. Eliot's 'Criterion': 1922-1939." Ph.D. dissertation. Columbia University, 1980, 24 page preview available.

Joost, Nicholas and Risdon, Ann. "Sketches and Preludes: T. S. Eliot's 'London Letters' in the Dial." Papers on Language and Literature, Fall 1976.

Julius, Anthony. Review of T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995). Reviewed by Gregory S. Jay, Journal of English and Germanic Philology. Julius defends his remarks. In the (U.K.) Guardian, 6/7/03.

Kaiser, Jo Ellen Green. "Disciplining 'The Waste Land', or how to lead critics into temptation," Twentieth Century Literature, Spring 1998.

Kroll, Jennifer. "Mary Butts's 'Unrest Cure' for The Waste Land." On connections between novelist Mary Butts and T.S. Eliot. Twentieth Century Literature, Jan. 1999

Laity, Cassandra and Nancy K. Gish, eds. "You! hypocrite lecteur! New readings of T. S. Eliot." A review of Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot (Cambridge UP 2004), Twentieth Century Literature, Fall 2007. Reviewed by Carrie J. Preston

Lentricchia, Frank. Publisher's site for Modernist Quartet (Cambridge UP 1994).

Lentricchia, Frank. Reviews of Lentricchia's Modernist Quartet, and Mastery and Escape: T. S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism by Jewel Spears Brooker. Reviewed by G. S. Lensing, in College English 58 (April 1996).

McIntire, Gabrielle. On Eliot's "Preludes," in Modernism, Memory, and Desire: T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf (Cambridge UP 2008). Publisher's web site, provides excerpt.

McRae, Shannon. "'Glowed into words: Vivien Eliot, Philomela, and the Poet's Tortured Corpse." [T.S. Eliot's wife Vivien Eliot] Writes McRae, "This essay argues that the difficult circumstances of Eliot's marriage gave him the necessary conditions for writing The Waste Land, and that both Vivien's illness and her intelligence were essential to its making." Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 2003

Perloff, Marjorie. "Avant-Garde Eliot," a chapter from Perloff's 21st-Century Modernism, The "New" Poetics (Blackwell Manifesto, 2002).

Pollard, Charles W. "Eliot in the tropics," a review of Charles W. Pollard's "New World Modernisms: T. S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, and Kamau Brathwaite (U of Virginia P 2004). Reviewed by Laurence A. Breiner in Twentieth Century Literature, Spring 2005

Rae, Patricia. "Mr. Charrington's junk shop: T.S. Eliot and modernist poetics in Nineteen Eighty-Four." Rae contends that "the shopkeeper [Mr. Charrington] is the poet who engaged Orwell in an analogous experience of attraction and betrayal in real life: T. S. Eliot. Winston's fatal association with Charrington is an allegory of Orwell's attraction to, and disillusionment with, Eliot's modernist poetics." Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 1997

Raine, Craig. "A Devoted Tour Guide to a Desert of a Soul." A review of Raine's T. S. Eliot (Oxford UP 2007), in the NYTimes, 1/16/07.

Raine, Craig. "A review of Craig Raine's In Defence of TS Eliot proves that Raine is a trenchant but anti-intellectual critic, says reviewer Geoff Dyer," in The Guardian.

Rector, Liam. "Inheriting Eliot." Asks "Where is the work of T. S. Eliot these days? Is his work being taken up by the generations of poets coming up?" American Poetry Review, Sep/Oct 2001.

Ricks, Christopher, ed. A review of Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 edited by Christopher Ricks. Reviewed by Dana Gioia, who writes "Inventions of the March Hare expands, deepens, and qualifies our knowledge of the central figure in English-language Modernism. For readers of Eliot, it is an indispensable book." The Washington Times, 3/16/97. Another review: "More American Than We Knew...Nerves, exhaustion and madness were at the core of Eliot's early imaginative thinking." Nicholas Jenkins, NY Times 4/27/97.

Ricks, Christopher. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n18_v41/ai_7962285 A review of Ricks' T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. Reviewed by Russell Kirk, National Review, 9/29/89 (removed). Another review, NYTimes, 8/22/89. Another review "brilliantly written and unfailingly interesting," reviewed by A. V. C. Schmidt in Review of English Studies 41 (Aug. 1990).

Schuchard, Ronald. A review of Schuchard's Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (Oxford, 2001). Reviewed by Gail McDonald in South Central Review 19 (Summer - Autumn, 2002).

Schuchard, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot as an Extension Lecturer, 1916-1919." The Review of English Studies 25 (May, 1974).

Skaff, William. A review of Skaff's The Philosophy of T. S. Eliot: From Skepticism to a Surrealist Poetic, 1909-1927. Reviewed by Jewel Spears Brooker in American Literature 59 (Oct. 1987).

Woodward, Kathleen M. At last, the real distinguished thing: the late poems of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams (Ohio Univ. Press, 1980). [Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, poetry of old age]. The entire book is available online from Ohio UP. See their "Knowledge Bank" for additional critical commentary.

Bibliography, text, libraries

A web site on the "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which includes links to thirteen reviews of the poem written between 1917 and 1919, by authors including Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Additional critical commentary. The Department of English, U of Saskatchewan.

On a project creating a scholarly digital version of a literary text using html, for the web site "The Prufrock Papers." U Saskatchewan.

The Robert Graves Trust Archive, St. John's College, Oxford, includes copies of T.S. Eliot's letters to Graves pertaining to the publication of The White Goddess and the incarceration of Ezra Pound.

Eliot reads "The Waste Land," Harper Audio.

Removed articles

Brooker, Jewel Spears, ed. T.S.Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Lu par Bernard Brugière (removed from http://etudes.americaines.free.fr/TRANSATLANTICA/CR/eliot.html).

Brooker, Jewel Spears, ed. Review of T. S. Eliot and Our Turning World (St. Martin's Press). Review by James Olney, Louisiana State University, SMLA (removed from http://www.samla.org/sar/01suOlney.html).

Constable, John. http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/jbcpub/iartse.html I. A. Richards, T S. Eliot and the Poetry of Belief." Essays in Criticism 40 (July 1990) (removed).

Donoghue, Denis. A review of Donoghue's Words Alone (Yale UP). "His central concern is with the sheer weirdness of Eliot's poetry. As Donoghue says, often Eliot's writing seems to stand outside what we usually think of as literary." The Independent, 1/27/01 (removed). Another review, "For Denis Donoghue, whose stern, substantial, densely-argued Words Alone is mercifully free of populist pretensions, Eliot is a revered figure to whom an immense personal debt is owed." By Dennis O'Driscoll, from the (UK)Poetry Society. Another review: "Hold the politics," in the Economist, 22 March 2001. Another review: "The Devilish God," by David Wheatley, London Review of Books, Nov. 2001 (all removed).

Kimball, Roger. "A craving for reality: T. S. Eliot today." Writes Kimball, "From our vantage point at the end of the millennium (maybe it should be called our "disadvantage" point), the extraordinary literary and critical authority that Eliot once commanded is almost incomprehensible." The New Criterion October 1999 (removed).

Kirsch, Adam. "Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot." "So frequently does Eliot disparage Arnold that it is easy to overlook how much he owes him." The American Scholar 67 no3 65-73 Summ '98 (removed from http://wilsontxt2.hwwilson.com/pdfhtml/04588/PH6Q8/TF6.htm).

Rainey, Lawrence. http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hbr/issues/fall05/articles/eliot.shtml Reviews of Revisiting The Waste Land and T.S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet by James E. Miller, Jr. Harvard Book Review (removed).

Ricks, Christopher. On "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in the Atlantic Monthly (removed).

Senst, Angela M. "Regional and National Identities in Robert Frost's and T.S. Eliot's Criticism." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 3 (2001) (removed).

Vendler, Helen. Professor Vendler writes on the pessimism of "The Wasteland" and its impact on literary culture in the first half of the 20th century. "'The Waste Land' was a deeply unoptimistic, un-Christian and therefore un-American poem, prefaced by the suicidal words of the Cumaean Sibyl, 'I want to die.' It is, we could say, the first Euro-poem." From Time Magazine's "Top 100 People of the 20th Century," 6/8/98 (removed).

"The Politics of T.S. Eliot." For the ultra-right take on T.S. Eliot, a lecture from the Heritage Foundation, by Russell Kirk, 1989 (removed from http://www.townhall.com/hall_of_fame/kirk/kirk182.htm).

An introduction to T. S. Eliot from Longman educational publishing (removed).

On the publishing history of Faber and Faber and T.S. Eliot as editor there. In The Independent, 11/3/05 (removed from http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article32075.ecea).

"What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed." "The private spiritual life of T. S. Eliot may have been rich and full. But Eliot's publicly presented spirituality-the spirituality in the Four Quartets, Murder in the Cathedral, and The Rock-seems merely weak and strange," writes the editor of a religious magazine. By J. Bottum, First Things 55 (August/September 1995) (removed).

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