T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

A selective list of 68 open access articles on T.S. Eliot, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the MLA Guidelines for Authors of Web Sites


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Literary criticism and analysis

Ackroyd, Peter. Frank Kermode reviews Peter Ackroyd's biography of T. S. Eliot in The Guardian, 9/27/84

Alderman, Nigel. "'Where are the eagles and the trumpets?': the strange case of Eliot's missing quatrains." In Twentieth Century Literature, Summer 1993

Bernstein, Charles. A short talk on T.S. Eliot and Allen Ginsberg, in which Bernstein opines that it did neither poet a service that Eliot became the poet who symbolized the closed and repressed, just as Ginsberg became the symbol of the open, the uncloseted, the anti-authoritarian. From the Conference on Contemporary Poetry, Rutgers Univ., 1997 (removed)

Brand, Clinton. "The voice of this Calling: the enduring legacy of T.S. Eliot." How T.S. Eliot became "the man" for political conservatives. In Modern Age, Fall 2003

Brlek, Tomislav "T.S. Eliot's Notion of Culture." In TRANS. Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften. No. 15/2003

Bromwich, David. Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry (Univ. of Chicago, 2001). Publisher's web site

Brooker, Jewel Spears, ed. T.S.Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Lu par Bernard Brugière (removed from http://etudes.americaines.free.fr/TRANSATLANTICA/CR/eliot.html)

Brooker, Jewel Spears, ed. Review of T. S. Eliot and Our Turning World (St. Martin's Press). Review by James Olney, Louisiana State University, in SMLA (removed from http://www.samla.org/sar/01suOlney.html)

Bush, Ronald. A review of Bush's T. S. Eliot: A Study in Character and Style and also of Conflicts in Consciousness: T. S. Eliot's Poetry and Criticism by David Spurr. Reviewed by Grover Smith in American Literature, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 143-146

Bush, Ronald. A review of Bush's T. S. Eliot The Modernist in History and also of T. S. Eliot: Encounters with Reality, by Sati Chatterjee. Reviewed by Rod Beecham. The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 176 (Nov., 1993), pp. 614-616

Chandran, K Narayana. "Phantoms of the mind: T.S. Eliot's 'To Walter de la Mare,'" in Papers on Language and Literature, Spring 1997

Childs, Donald J. Publisher's page for Childs' Modernism and Eugenics: Woolf, Eliot, Yeats, and the Culture of Degeneration (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001) [Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats]

Chinitz, David. "T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide." First page of article only. PMLA, Vol. 110, No. 2 (Mar., 1995), pp. 236-247

Clark, Carlton. "'Such a Vision of the Street as the Street Hardly Understands': Jonathan Swift, T. S. Eliot, and the Anti-Pastoral." Clark analyzes four poems about morning in the city, three by Eliot and one by Swift. In EESE April 2000

Constable, John. "I. A. Richards, T S. Eliot and the Poetry of Belief." From Essays in Criticism, 40/3 (July 1990), 222-243

Donoghue, Denis. "T. S. Eliot and the Poem Itself." Donoghue discusses his own response and those of other noted critics to Eliot's poetry. In Partisan Review, Jan. 2000

Donoghue, Denis. "One Man's Personal Relationship with T.S. Eliot's Poetry," a review of Donoghue's Words Alone (Yale Univ. Press). In Texas Education Review. Another review (removed), "His central concern is with the sheer weirdness of Eliot's poetry. As Donoghue says, often Eliot's writing seems to stand outside what we usually think of as literary." The Independent, 1/27/01. Another review, "For Denis Donoghue, whose stern, substantial, densely-argued Words Alone is mercifully free of populist pretensions, Eliot is a revered figure to whom an immense personal debt is owed." By Dennis O'Driscoll, from the (UK)Poetry Society. Another review: "So Elegant, So Intelligent. Denis Donoghue analyzes the poetry - not the life - of T. S. Eliot." NY Times, 11/26/00. Another review: "Hold the politics," in the Economist, Mar 22nd 2001. Another review: "The Devilish God," by David Wheatley, in London Review of Books, Nov. 2001

Eagleton, Terry. "Nudge-Winking." "The Criterion, T.S. Eliot’s periodical, ran from shortly after the First World War to the very eve of World War Two. Or, if one prefers, from one of Eliot’s major bouts of depression to another. The two time-schemes are, in fact, related." London Review of Books, 9/19/2002

Ellmann, Maud. A review of Ellman's The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Reviewed by Ronald Bush, Modern Language Studies, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), pp. 83-87

Fleissner, R.F. "T. S. Eliot and Anti-Semitism." Fleissner defends T. S. Eliot from criticism that he was anti-semitic. In Contemporary Review, Dec. 1999

Glaser, Brian. "A Hegelian Reading of T.S. Eliot's Negativity," in Cercles 12 (2005)

Harding, Jason. A review of Harding's The 'Criterion': Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Interwar Britain (Oxford Univ. Press). Reviewed in London Review of Books, Vol. 24 No. 18, 19 September 2002, by Terry Eagleton

Johnston, Ian. A lecture on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Waste Land," by Ian Johnston, Malaspina University-College

Johnson, Loretta Lucido. "T. S. Eliot's 'Criterion': 1922-1939," Ph.D. dissertationColumbia University, 1980, 24 page preview available

Julius, Anthony. Review of T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form(Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995). Reviewed by Gregory S. Jay, in Journal of English and Germanic Philology Eliot in the Dock, another review. By Jewel Spears Brooker, in South Atlantic Review 61:4 (Fall 1996):107-14. Julius defends his remarks. In the (U.K.) Guardian, 6/7/03

Kaiser, Jo Ellen Green. "Disciplining 'The Waste Land', or how to lead critics into temptation," in Twentieth Century Literature, Spring 1998

Kenner, Hugh. "In the Footsteps of the Master." Kenner reviews two books on T.S. Eliot by Frank Kermode, circa 1975. Groovy baby. In the NYTimes, 11/9/75

Kimball, Roger. "A craving for reality: T. S. Eliot today." Writes Kimball, "From our vantage point at the end of the millennium (maybe it should be called our "disadvantage" point), the extraordinary literary and critical authority that Eliot once commanded is almost incomprehensible." The New Criterion, October 1999

Kirsch, Adam. "Matthew Arnold and T. S. Eliot." "So frequently does Eliot disparage Arnold that it is easy to overlook how much he owes him." In The American Scholar 67 no3 65-73 Summ '98 (removed from http://wilsontxt2.hwwilson.com/pdfhtml/04588/PH6Q8/TF6.htm)

Lentricchia, Frank. Publisher's site for Modernist Quartet (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994)

Lentricchia, Frank. Reviews of Lentricchia's Modernist Quartet, and Mastery and Escape: T. S. Eliot and the Dialectic of Modernism by Jewel Spears Brooker. Reviewed by George S. Lensing in College English, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Apr., 1996), pp. 460-470

Ozick, Cynthia. "T.S. Eliot at 101," The New Yorker, 11/20/89

Perloff, Marjorie. "Avant-Garde Eliot," a chapter from Perloff's 21st-Century Modernism, The "New" Poetics (Blackwell Manifesto, 2002)

Raine, Craig. "Private passions: Although the idea of a life not fully lived is central to his poetry, TS Eliot was not the dry old stick of his self-caricature. His personal story was full of quiet drama, and even recklessness." The Guardian, 1/6/07

Raine, Craig. "A Devoted Tour Guide to a Desert of a Soul." A review of Raine's T. S. Eliot (Oxford Univ. Press, 2007), in the NYTimes, 1/16/07

Raine, Craig. "A review of Craig Raine's In Defence of TS Eliot proves that Raine is a trenchant but anti-intellectual critic, says reviewer Geoff Dyer," in The Guardian

Rainey, Lawrence. Reviews of Revisiting The Waste Land and T.S. Eliot: The Making of an American Poet by James E. Miller, Jr. Reviewed by Casey N. Cep in the Harvard Book Review

Rector, Liam. "Inheriting Eliot." Asks "Where is the work of T. S. Eliot these days? Is his work being taken up by the generations of poets coming up?" In American Poetry Review, Sep/Oct 2001

Ricks, Christopher, ed. A review of Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909-1917 edited by Christopher Ricks. Reviewed by Dana Gioia, who writes "Inventions of the March Hare expands, deepens, and qualifies our knowledge of the central figure in English-language Modernism. For readers of Eliot, it is an indispensable book." The Washington Times, 3/16/97. Another review: "More American Than We Knew...Nerves, exhaustion and madness were at the core of Eliot's early imaginative thinking." Nicholas Jenkins, NY Times 4/27/97. Another review, by Michael Donaghy, New Statesman, 9/27/96 (removed)

Ricks, Christopher. An accessible article on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," in The Atlantic Monthly (removed)

Ricks, Christopher. A review of Ricks' T. S. Eliot and Prejudice. Reviewed by Russell Kirk National Review, 9/29/89. Another review, NYTimes, 8/22/89. Another review "brilliantly written and unfailingly interesting," reviewed by A. V. C. Schmidt in The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 41, No. 163 (Aug., 1990), pp. 425-427

Schuchard, Ronald. A review of Schuchard's Eliot's Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art (Oxford, 2001). Reviewed by Gail McDonald in South Central Review, Vol. 19, No. 2/3, 9/11 (Summer - Autumn, 2002), pp. 118-120

Schuchard, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot as an Extension Lecturer, 1916-1919." In The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 25, No. 98 (May, 1974), pp. 163-173

Senst, Angela M. "Regional and National Identities in Robert Frost's and T.S. Eliot's Criticism," in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 3.2 (2001)

Skaff, William. A review of Skaff's The Philosophy of T. S. Eliot: From Skepticism to a Surrealist Poetic, 1909-1927. Reviewed by Jewel Spears Brooker in American Literature, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Oct., 1987), pp. 443-445

Stead, C.K. "C.K. Stead's novel, The Secret History of Modernism." Article by Geoff Dyer, LA Weekly, 5/22/02

Thormählen, Marianne. A substantial intro to T. S. Eliot from the Literary Encyclopedia, 3/30/01

Vendler, Helen. Vendler writes on the pessimism of "The Wasteland" and its impact on literary culture in the first half of the 20th century. "'The Waste Land' was a deeply unoptimistic, un-Christian and therefore un-American poem, prefaced by the suicidal words of the Cumaean Sibyl, 'I want to die.' It is, we could say, the first Euro-poem." From Time Magazine's "Top 100 People of the 20th Century," 6/8/98

Woodward, Kathleen M. At last, the real distinguished thing: the late poems of Eliot, Pound, Stevens, and Williams (Ohio Univ. Press, 1980). [T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, poetry of old age]. The entire book is available online from Ohio University Press in PDF. Consult their "Knowledge Bank" for additional critical commentary available online


Introductory and overview

A brief introduction to T.S. Eliot "With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world." From The Academy of American Poets

Modern American Poetry Site (Univ. of Illinois) re-prints excerpts from reputable literary criticism of the following poems: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gernonition, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men, The journey of the Magi, Burnt Norton

An extended biography of T. S. Eliot by Ronald Bush, at Modern American Poetry Site (Univ. of Illinois)

An extended, introductory article on T.S. Eliot, includes list of his works, from the Poetry Foundation

On the publishing history of Faber and Faber and T.S. Eliot as editor there. In The Independent, 11/3/05 (removed from http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article32075.ecea)

A brief biography of T.S. Eliot from Books and Writers, Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland

Journal rekindles debate on whether T. S. Eliot was anti-Semitic by John Sanford, Stanford Report, April 9, 2003

What T.S. Eliot Almost Believed "(T)he private spiritual life of T. S. Eliot may have been rich and full. But Eliot's publicly presented spirituality-the spirituality in the Four Quartets, Murder in the Cathedral, and The Rock-seems merely weak and strange," writes the editor of a religious magazine. By J. Bottum, 1995 First Things 55 (August/September 1995): 25-30

"The Politics of T.S. Eliot." For the ultra-right take on T.S. Eliot, a lecture from the Heritage Foundation, by Russell Kirk, 1989 (removed from http://www.townhall.com/hall_of_fame/kirk/kirk182.htm)

An introduction to T. S. Eliot from Longman educational publishing (removed)

Issues and questions for teachers and readers of Eliot's poetry, from publisher Heath

T.S. Eliot's Nobel Prize page. As winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1948, Eliot is featured on a web site from the Nobel Prize organization, with a brief biography and a copy of his Nobel speech



Bibliography, text, libraries

Annotated bibliography for T.S. Eliot from an class at Oxford University

A bibliographical guide to Eliot from Professor Paul P. Reuben's Perspectives in American Literature web site

A web site on the "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which includes links to thirteen reviews of the poem written between 1917 and 1919, by authors including Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Also links to full text of additional criticism. The Department of English, University of Saskatchewan

On a project creating a scholarly digital version of a literary text for the web site "The Prufrock Papers." University of Saskatchewan, no date

Catalogue to the contents of the Robert Graves Trust Archive, St. John's College, Oxford. Includes copies of T.S. Eliot's letters to Graves pertaining to the publication of The White Goddess and the incarceration of Ezra Pound

Books on T.S. Eliot by Members and Distinguished Lecturers of the T.S. Eliot Society

T.S. Eliot reads "The Waste Land," presented by Harper Audio


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