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A Companion to T. S. Eliot
Reflecting the surge of critical interest in Eliot renewed in recent years, A Companion to T.S. Eliot introduces the 'new' Eliot to readers and educators by examining the full body of his works and career. Leading scholars in the field provide a fresh and fully comprehensive collection of contextual and critical essays on his life and achievement.
It compiles the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment available of Eliot's work and career
It explores the powerful forces that shaped Eliot as a writer and thinker, analyzing his body of work and assessing his oeuvre in a variety of historical, cultural, social, and philosophical
It charts the surge in critical interest in T.S. Eliot since the early 1990s
It provides an illuminating insight into a poet, writer, and critic who continues to define the literary landscape of the last century
It compiles the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment available of Eliot's work and career
It explores the powerful forces that shaped Eliot as a writer and thinker, analyzing his body of work and assessing his oeuvre in a variety of historical, cultural, social, and philosophical
It charts the surge in critical interest in T.S. Eliot since the early 1990s
It provides an illuminating insight into a poet, writer, and critic who continues to define the literary landscape of the last century
504 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 22, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 18, 2022
this is a very updated collection of essays. it deals with contemporary trends in eliot studies and it is more focused on his poetry and plays, rather than his criticism. it is worthy of a proper reading some time in future when i wanna get in depth in eliot and his poetry.
December 11, 2016
This is a 2009 collection on various aspects of T. S. Eliot's life and work, the chapters contributed by a number of scholars from across the English-speaking world. The contributions are grouped under the three themes “Influences”, “Works" and “Contexts”. “Influences” deals with the poet's own biography as well as the poetic forebears (Arthur Symons, the French Symbolists) forebears that he adopted. The part “Works” covers Eliot's entire output of poetry, drama, and prose (both literary criticism and social thought). “Contexts” contains contributions on Eliot within the broader Modernist scene, how his work intersects with sexuality, race and gender, his work as a publisher, and his presence in popular culture.
The collection aims to synthesize recent Eliot scholarship and bring recent developments to a larger readership. I was on a big Eliot kick in the 1990s and read almost everything available back then, and I appreciated how this Companion drew my attention to newer work. The contributors here have been able to take recently discovered early verse (The Inventions of the March Hare) into account. I feel like I now have a better understanding of the background to Eliot's work. For example, David E. Chinitz's contribution on Eliot's relationship to popular culture (which summarizes his own book-length work T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide) revealed that this poet and thinker, often disparaged as too highfalutin and highbrow, had a love of melodramatic popular novels, English music hall, and blackface ministrel shows. When, in The Waste Land, Eliot wrote, “I heard the rattle of the bones and chuckle spread from ear to ear,” that isn't a macabre meditation on death seeing it as grimly humorous, it's a reference to minstrelry's racial stereotypes and use of bones as musical instruments.
Not everything here is of the same quality, and especially in the discussion of individual poems there is not always something fresh beyond earlier criticism, but I would still recommend this to an Eliot fan. Note that the book assumes that you have Eliot's collected poems and plays at hand and can refer to it whenever necessary.
The collection aims to synthesize recent Eliot scholarship and bring recent developments to a larger readership. I was on a big Eliot kick in the 1990s and read almost everything available back then, and I appreciated how this Companion drew my attention to newer work. The contributors here have been able to take recently discovered early verse (The Inventions of the March Hare) into account. I feel like I now have a better understanding of the background to Eliot's work. For example, David E. Chinitz's contribution on Eliot's relationship to popular culture (which summarizes his own book-length work T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide) revealed that this poet and thinker, often disparaged as too highfalutin and highbrow, had a love of melodramatic popular novels, English music hall, and blackface ministrel shows. When, in The Waste Land, Eliot wrote, “I heard the rattle of the bones and chuckle spread from ear to ear,” that isn't a macabre meditation on death seeing it as grimly humorous, it's a reference to minstrelry's racial stereotypes and use of bones as musical instruments.
Not everything here is of the same quality, and especially in the discussion of individual poems there is not always something fresh beyond earlier criticism, but I would still recommend this to an Eliot fan. Note that the book assumes that you have Eliot's collected poems and plays at hand and can refer to it whenever necessary.
August 25, 2014
A good one stop shop if you want to know the current thinking about Eliot.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews