Description
Book SynopsisWhat principles connectand what distinctions separateThe Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, and Four Quartets?The thought-tormented characters in T. S. Eliot's early poetry are paralyzed by the gap between mind and body, thought and action. The need to address this impasse is part of what drew Eliot to philosophy, and the failure of philosophy to appease his disquiet is the reason he gave for abandoning it. In T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination, Jewel Spears Brooker argues that two of the principles that Eliot absorbed as a PhD student at Harvard and Oxford were to become permanent features of his mind, grounding his lifelong quest for wholeness and underpinning most of his subsequent poetry. The first principle is that contradictions are best understood dialectically, by moving to perspectives that both include and transcend them. The second is that all truths exist in relation to other truths. Together or in tandem, these two principlesdialectic and relativismconstit
Trade ReviewBrooker's familiarity with the detailed chronology of Eliot's intellectual development makes her an exceptionally helpful and authoritative guide . . . this is a lucid, intricate but informative book, and the more you already know about Eliot, the more you will learn from it.
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Review of English StudiesBrooker integrates complex philosophical and theological analyses into a deeply sympathetic, emotionally intelligent study. She excels in guiding us along Eliot's intellectual and creative trajectory, using dialectics to draw a portrait of the conflicted mind of a poet who 'abandons nothing
en route' . . .
T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination will no doubt become a standard point of reference in the Eliotic critical canon.
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The Modernist ReviewBrooker's work makes skillful use of hitherto unpublished materials.
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Make it New: The Ezra Pound Society MagazineJewel Spears Brooker has written a book fully deserving of those accolades on its dust jacket. Its originality, intellectual heft, and clear, graceful style make it appealing to Eliot's general readership and essential for Eliot scholars. "We are in the dawn of a renaissance in Eliot studies," she writes in her Introduction.
T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination is a distinguished contribution to that renaissance, taking it beyond its dawn to full sunrise.
—Victor Strandberg,
Literary MattersIn eleven compact and cogent chapters, Jewel Spears Brooker provides a persuasive account of T. S. Eliot's development as man, thinker, and poet. Brooker's book . . . is likely to be permanently useful.
—Massimo Bacigalupo,
Modern Language ReviewT. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination is an important contribution to Eliot criticism that will undoubtedly become essential reading for scholars of modernism in general and of T. S. Eliot in particular. Its straightforward and lucid language, accessible structure, and expert use of recent scholarship will appeal to a general Eliot readership as well. Like Brooker's other books and essays,
T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination is a major achievement.
—Kinereth Meyer,
Partial AnswersBrooker's latest monograph,
T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination, is a hallmark of scholarly brilliance and literary taste.
—Lizi Dzagnidze,
Journal of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature T.S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination provides a fresh and systematic Eliot, reassesses some fundamental issues in Eliot studies, and more importantly, opens up new areas of interpretation regarding Eliot's concern with wholeness, his attitudes toward science and scientific methods, and his ventures into mysticism and epistemology.
—Chen Lin, Shanghai Normal University,
Journal of Modern LiteratureTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Disjunction and Dialectic in T. S. Eliot
1. The Debate between Body and Soul in Eliot's Early Poetry
2. Eliot's First Conversion: "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and the 1913 Critique of Bergson
3. Eliot's Debt to F. H. Bradley: Reality and Appearance in 1914
4. The Poet and the Cave-Man: Making History in "Sweeney among the Nightingales" and The
Waste Land
5. Individual Works and Organic Wholes: The Idealist Foundation of Eliot's Criticism
6. Poetry and Despair: The Hollow Men and the End of Philosophy
7. Love and Ecstasy in Donne, Dante, and Andrewes
8. Eliot's Second Conversion: Dogma without Dogmatism
9. An Exilic Triptych: The Waste Land, Ash-Wednesday, "Marina"
10. "Into our first world": Return and Recognition in Burnt Norton and Little Gidding
11. War and the Problem of Evil in the Wartime Quartets: Reason, Love, Poetry
Notes
Bibliography
Index
