Description
Book SynopsisThe twentieth century''s most famous poet and its most influential literary arbiter, T.S. Eliot has long been thought to be an obscure and difficult writer-forbiddingly learned, maddeningly enigmatic. In this compelling exploration, prize-winning poet Craig Raine finds a way to read and make sense of Eliot''s full corpus. He illuminates a paradoxical Eliot--an exacting anti-romantic realist, skeptical of the emotions, yet incessantly troubled by the fear of emotional failure--through close readings of his poetry, with extended analyses of Eliot''s two master works--The Waste Land and Four Quartets. Raine also examines Eliot''s criticism--including his coinage of such key literary terms as the objective correlative, dissociation of sensibility, the auditory imagination, and his biography, crafting a book that provides a concise introduction for beginners and a provocative set of arguments for Eliot admirers.
Trade ReviewThe book is excellent on the influence on Eliot of Jules Laforge, and has a poet's astute ear for the stray effects of sound and syntax. * Terry Eagleton, Prospect *
The most attractive quality of Raine's mind, in this book, is its vivacity, its enthusiasm, its racy pleasure in turning aside to compare a detail in Eliot with something in Nabokov, Kundera or Lawrence. * Denis Donoghue, London Review of Books *
a fabulous stimulating book, which marries old-fashioned literary criticism to pleasingly off-beam cultural allusions. * Ian Thomson, The Spectator *
This book is an ingenious and convincing demonstration that Eliot is still the Old Possum: lying unassertively low, but anxiously aware that the disinterment of the buried life is an undeniable imperative. But most importantly, it shows perceptively why Eliot's poems work with their unique compulsiveness. * Bernard O'Donoghue, Literary Review *
(Eliot's) existence is in his published work. This explains the strategy of Raine's short monograph - an intensely argued reading of the words on the published page. The exercise is done brilliantly. A poet himself, Raine is hyper alert to nuance. He has a sensitivity to literary echo rivalling that of the greatest living reader of Eliot, Christopher Ricks. * John Sutherland, Financial Times *
There are authors who one would rather read about than read. T.S Eliot is not one of them, yet there is both pleasure and profit to be got from Craig Raine's new study of the poet. * John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement *
Do we need another book about him? The answer, given Craig Raine's T.S. Eliot, is a strong 'Yes'. * Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times (Culture) *
a sensitive, wide-ranging and stimulating piece of literary criticism * Sunday Telegraph *
This is a thoughtful book on a thorny subject. * John Montague, Irish Times (Dublin) *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Preface ; Introduction: Eliot and the Buried Life ; Chapter 1: The Failure to Live ; Chapter 2: Eliot as Classicist ; Chapter 3: The Waste Land ; Chapter 4: Four Quartets ; Chapter 5: The Drama ; Chapter 6: The Criticism ; Appendix 1: Eliot and Anti-Semitism ; Appendix 2: Two Free Translations by Craig Raine of 'Lune de Miel' and 'Dans le Restaurant' ; Appendix 3: An Eliot Chronology ; Notes ; Index
