T.s. Eliot the Invisible Poet

by Hugh Kenner, Unknown Author

A brilliant and indispensable interpretation of drama written between the last years of Elizabeth and the first years of Charles I, The Jacobean Drama traces the evolution of thought and mood from the end of Marlowe's career, through the work of Ben John, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, Tourneur and Webster, to a culminating phase in the plays of Shakespeare and to modifications made by his successors, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton and Rowley, and Ford.

Genres: Criticism, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Literature

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Surabhi · Rating 2 out of 5]

T.S. Eliot remains an enigma despite the numerous attempts to explain him- and his writings. As poet and dramatist, bank official,publisher, Nobel Prize winner, Eliot has been heralded conversely as the voice of 20th century renegade despair and the epitome of British respectability. Here Hugh Kenner, Chairman of the English Department of the University of California, brings to Eliot the same uncompromising scrutiny which distinguished his works on Pound and Lewis and Joyce. He does not attempt an exposition of Eliot's writings; he explores, instead, the influences on his philosophy and his techniques, and by recalling successive poems and plays, his literary achievement takes form, and the world of Eliot achieves visibility. Kenner does not superimpose his own interpretations. Rather he focusses directly on Eliot's own words and references, expanding, paraphrasing, with the sympathetic approach to the climate of Eliot's achievement. The end result for the reader is a key to Eliot's vast, timeless universe of emotional reality, the inviolate domain of the poet. An essential book for students of modern poetry, and for all who have been magnetized and baffled by Eliot's ambiguity. (Kirkus Reviews)

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

After you’re halfway through this book, you’d get the quintessence of why Eliot has accurately been described as an ‘invisible poet’.

Eliot comes to us as a man who never unlocked his private heart n his poetry. But, in life, he was one of the great worthies consorting with his peers in the realm of letters. Some of the men who had observed him at close quarters have left behind interesting penportraits of his person, habit and character.

I quote below an excerpt from the sketch of Herbert Read, a great literary critic of the day: “He was a serious, not necessarily a solemn man, a severe man, never lacking in kindness and sympathy, a profound man. And yet to outward appearance a correct man, a conventional man, an infinitely polite man-----in brief a gentle man. He was not only incapable of a mean deed; I would also say that he never had a mean thought. He could mock folly and he was severe with sin, and there were people he simply did not wish to know. But his circle of friends, though never very large, was very diverse, and he could relax with great charm in the presence..”

Eliot once observed about his poetry -‘in its sources, in its emotional springs, it comes from America’. The literature of the 20th century may not inappropriately be described as the product of intellectual cross-breeding, of various forms and kinds. But one form of this cross-breeding, which concerns us immediately, is the marriage of the New world with the old, the interpenetration of the stream of the European literary movements and participate d also, as much as possible, in the process of assimilation of the art, philosophy and religions of the East, which had already made a substantial head-way.

Read this book to know more … Most recommended.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

some important stuff and some guff, seems to be kenner's modus operandi, but being mostly guff myself who am i to criticise!

[J. Alfred · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never once read a book of criticism and said "wow, this guy is great! I'd like to find everything he's written" until I read Kenner's The Pound Era, and even that was really slow to grow on me. After I finished it, though, it kind of rearranged my own thinking such that I can't come across anything about Pound or Eliot or any modernist poet without thinking about Kenner. I'm now basically on a quest to find and read everything the man wrote. He's astonishingly good. If you're a bigger fan of Eliot than Pound (aren't we all) read this one. It doesn't have quite the same abandon as The Pound Era, but it will help you understand Eliot much better.

[Ashley Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hugh Kenner's adventure into the world of Eliot is dense. I ought to have read it with a dictionary, and within the first chapter I wished I spoke French. However, in not offering translations, Kenner is in many ways staying true to Eliot. Like Eliot's poetry, Kenner's work weaves in influences that leave you wondering if the quote is from Eliot, Kenner, Bradley, or yet another invisible voice. I also gained a respect for Kenner's form- a chapter on play writing is written in the format of a script, for example. Some fabulous ideas centering largely on reader-response criticism and prosody, this book takes a rather determined reader.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The defining work of Eliot studies. Kenner was the first to offer a comprehensive reading of Eliot's poetry which took into account his intellectual heritage, particularly his continual engagement with the idealist philosophy of F. H. Bradley. Kenner forever changed the way in which the Quartets are read in his examination of their structural (dialectical) relation, in terms of opposites first falsely and then truly reconciled.

[Roberta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read relating Eliot's poetry to his life, education and hidden influences, and analyzing the poetry in a comprehensive and interesting way.