T. S. Eliot
The Modernist in History

The centenary of Eliot's birth in 1988 provided the salutary occasion for a fresh look at his life and work.

Ronald Bush (Edited by)

9780521105286, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 March 2009

224 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.34 kg

The centenary of Eliot's birth in 1988 provided the salutary occasion for a fresh look at his life and work and a reassessment in light of issues raised by the various critical movements - the new historicism, feminism, reader-reception theory - that have succeeded the New Criticism, loosely subsumable under the rubric post-structuralist. The essays assembled here vary in approach, but they share a commitment to the discipline of history and an awareness that history can function as critique as well as celebration. Several contributors take issue with Eliot's self-presentation and include documents Eliot chose not to emphasise. Others address topics including the business of producing culture in twentieth-century writing, the impact of self-professed masculinist poetry on women readers and modernism's social vouchers.

Introduction Ronald Bush
Part I. Eliot's Women/Women's Eliot: 1. Eliot and women Lyndall Gordon
2. Gender, voice and figuration in Eliot's early poetry Carol Christ
Part II. Ara Vos Prec: 3. Eliot's negotiation of satire and suffering James Longenbach
4. The Waste Land and Eliot's poetry notebook John T. Mayer
5. The price of Modernism: publishing The Waste Land Lawrence Rainey
Part III. Eliot and the Practice of Twentieth-Century Poetry: 6. The allusive poet: Eliot and his sources A. Walton Litz
7. Forms of simultaneity in The Waste Land and Burnt Norton Alan Williamson
Part IV. The History and Future of Modernism: 8. Eliot, Lukacs and the politics of Modernism Michael North
9. T. S. Eliot and Modernism at the present time: a provocation Ronald Bush
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]