T. S. Eliot and the Dynamic Imagination

A wide-ranging and novel study of metaphor as the generative principle giving shape and substance to Eliot's poetic imagination.

Sarah Kennedy (Author)

9781108425216, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 April 2018

268 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.51 kg

'It's remarkable for its depth of knowledge of Eliot's work, in prose and in poetry (a pre-condition for such a book one might suppose but often less evident than in this case) as well as of her other sources. Sarah Kennedy draws selectively but astonishingly widely on her predecessors (paying due tribute) but her book stands out also for its penetration into the imaginative workings of Eliot the creative artist.' Chris Joyce, Exchanges (Newsletter of the T. S. Eliot Society)

How is a poem made? From what constellation of inner and outer worlds does it issue forth? Sarah Kennedy's study of Eliot's poetics seeks out those images most striking in their resonance and recurrence: the 'sea-change', the 'light invisible' and the 'dark ghost'. She makes the case for these sustained metaphors as constitutive of the poet's imagination and art. Eliot was haunted by recurrence. His work is full of moments of luminous recognitions, moments in which a writer discovers both subject and appropriate image. This book examines such moments of recognition and invocation by reference to three clusters of imagery, drawing on the contemporary languages of literary criticism, psychology, physics and anthropology. Eliot's transposition of these registers, at turns wary and beguiled, interweaves modern understandings of originary processes in the human and natural world with a poet's preoccupation with language. The metaphors arising from these intersections generate the imaginative logic of Eliot's poetry.

Part I. Sea Voices: Eliot's Tempest: 1. Immersion: Eliot, James and Shakespeare
2. Hints of earlier and other creation
3. This isle is full of noises
Part II. Broken Images: Illuminating Time and Space: 4. Vacant interstellar spaces
5. Looking backward
6. Luminous recognitions
Part III. Gestation and Resurrection: 7. His dark materials
8. Dark doubles
9. Blood for the ghosts.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary theory [DSA], Poetry by individual poets [DCF]