A Companion to T. S. Eliot

Critical attention to T. S. Eliot’s works and career has surged since the early 1990s. Innovative scholarship on philosophy, gender, sexuality, and popular culture in his work, as well as renewed controversy over his politics and prejudices, attests to fresh interest in this modernist icon. At the same time, after one of the most successful runs in history, the curtain finally came down on the London and New York production of Cats (for which Eliot was posthumously awarded a Tony); Inventions of the March Hare , a fascinating collection of early poems that had been lost for decades, was finally published; and Time magazine named Eliot “Poet of the Century”. A Companion to T. S. Eliot introduces a new generation of readers and educators to Eliot and covers the full breadth of his literary career. The text explores the powerful forces that shaped Eliot as a writer and thinker, analyzes his body of work, and assesses his oeuvre in a variety of contexts: historical, cultural, social, and intellectual. The result is an analytical portrait of T. S. Eliot observed through contemporary eyes by leading Eliot scholars – providing illuminating insight into a poet, writer, and critic who continues to define the literary landscape of the last century.

Notes on Contributors viii Preface xiv Acknowledgments xvi Abbreviations Used for Works by T. S. Eliot xvii Part I : Influences 1 1 The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: Eliot′s Life 3 Anthony Cuda 2 Eliot′s Ghosts: Tradition and its Transformations 15 Sanford Schwartz 3 T. S. Eliot and the Symbolist City 27 Barry J. Faulk 4 Not One, Not Two: Eliot and Buddhism 40 Christina Hauck 5 Yes and No: Eliot and Western Philosophy 53 Jewel Spears Brooker 6 A Vast Wasteland? Eliot and Popular Culture 66 David E. Chinitz 7 Mind, Myth, and Culture: Eliot and Anthropology 79 Marc Manganaro 8 "Where are the eagles and the trumpets?": Imperial Decline and Eliot′s Development 91 Vincent Sherry Part II : Works 105 9 Searching for the Early Eliot: Inventions of the March Hare 107 Jayme Stayer 10 Prufrock and Other Observations : A Walking Tour 120 Frances Dickey 11 Disambivalent Quatrains 133 Jeffrey M. Perl 12 "Gerontion": The Mind of Postwar Europe and the Mind(s) of Eliot 145 Edward Brunner 13 "Fishing, with the arid plain behind me": Diffi culty, Deferral, and Form in The Waste Land 157 Michael Coyle 14 The Enigma of "The Hollow Men" 168 Elisabeth Däumer 15 Sweeney Agonistes : A Sensational Snarl 179 Christine Buttram 16 "Having to construct": Dissembly Lines in the "Ariel" Poems and Ash–Wednesday 191 Tony Sharpe 17 "The inexplicable mystery of sound": Coriolan , Minor Poems, Occasional Verses 204 Gareth Reeves 18 Coming to Terms with Four Quartets 216 Lee Oser 19 "Away we go": Poetry and Play in Old Possum′s Book of Practical Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber′s Cats 228 Sarah Bay–Cheng 20 Eliot′s 1930s Plays: The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral , and The Family Reunion 239 Randy Malamud 21 Eliot′s "Divine" Comedies: The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk , and The Elder Statesman 251 Carol H. Smith 22 Taking Literature Seriously : Essays to 1927 263 Leonard Diepeveen 23 He Do the Critic in Different Voices: The Literary Essays after 1927 275 Richard Badenhausen 24 In Times of Emergency: Eliot′s Social Criticism 287 John Xiros Cooper Part III : Contexts 299 25 Eliot′s Poetics: Classicism and Histrionics 301 Lawrence Rainey 26 T. S. Eliot and Something Called Modernism 311 Ann Ardis 27 Confl ict and Concealment: Eliot’s Approach to Women and Gender 323 Cyrena Pondrom 28 Eliot and "Race": Jews, Irish, and Blacks 335 Bryan Cheyette 29 "The pleasures of higher vices": Sexuality in Eliot′s Work 350 Patrick Query 30 "An occupation for the saint": Eliot as a Religious Thinker 363 Kevin J. H. Dettmar 31 Eliot′s Politics 376 Michael Levenson 32 Keeping Critical Thought Alive: Eliot′s Editorship of the Criterion 388 Jason Harding 33 Making Modernism: Eliot as Publisher 399 John Timberman Newcomb 34 Eliot and the New Critics 411 Gail McDonald 35 "T. S. Eliot rates socko!": Modernism, Obituary, and Celebrity 423 Aaron Jaffe 36 Eliot′s Critical Reception: "The quintessence of twenty–fi rst–century poetry" 436 Nancy K. Gish 37 Radical Innovation and Pervasive Infl uence: The Waste Land 449 James Longenbach Bibliography of Works by T. S. Eliot 460 Index 463

David E. Chinitz, Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, is the author of T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (2003) and Which Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes (2013). He is currently first vice president of the Modernist Studies Association and past president of the T. S. Eliot Society.