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T. S. Eliot and Ideology, Vol. 86

Name: T. S. Eliot and Ideology, Vol. 86
Author: Kenneth Asher
ISBN: 9780521627603

by Kenneth Asher, Albert Gelpi (Editor), Ross Posnock

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Overview

This book demonstrates the effect of politics on the work of T.S. Eliot, with particular emphasis on the influences of French reactionary thinking. Kenneth Asher argues that this political inheritance provided the intellectual framework Eliot employed throughout his career. The focus of this political dimension separates the book from previous studies of Eliot. The result is a reestimation of Eliot's view of literary history and literary theory, and new appraisals of several major poems and plays.

Synopsis

Setting out to demonstrate the effect of politics on the work of T. S. Eliot, T. S. Eliot and Ideology charts first of all the influence of French reactionary thinking on Eliot's prose and poetry, and further argues that this political inheritance provided the intellectual framework he employed throughout his career. Asher's concentration on the specifically ideological separates this book from previous works on Eliot, and sheds light on Eliot's celebrated mid-career conversion to Catholicism. What results is a re-estimation of Eliot's view of literary history and literary theory, and new appraisals of several major poems and plays. Finally, the book discusses at length how Eliot's ideology profoundly influenced the study of literature in the English-speaking world for several decades.