T. S. Eliot

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Standard Name: Eliot, T. S.
Used Form: Thomas Stearns Eliot
TSE , an American settled in England, was the dominant voice in English poetry during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as an immensely influential critic. His early experimental poems excel at catching an atmosphere or mood, often a moment of stasis and self-doubt. The Waste Land, a brilliant collage of fragments, has been seen to express the fears of a whole society about the threatened end of culture and amenity called civilization. After Eliot's conversion to Christianity his poetry moved to sombre investigations of the spiritual life: of time, fate, decision, guilt, and reconciliation. Meanwhile his criticism grappled with the the relation of past to present in terms of the contemporary relationship to tradition. TSE also wrote lively comic verse, and in theatrical writing he moved on from pageant and historical religious drama to symbolic representation of spiritual issues through events in banal daily life.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Adrienne Rich
Here she was introduced to the poetry of Donne , Yeats , Eliot , Pound , Frost , Thomas , MacNeice , Stevens , and Ginsberg .
Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. Sage.
7
Rich enjoyed her time at Radcliffe, though...
Literary responses Dorothy Richardson
H. G. Wells , reviewing this work, wrote that DR had probably carried impressionism in fiction to its furthest limit. He considered that her percepts never become concepts, and that her heroine is not a...
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich through Jane Austen , Emily and Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Literary responses Laura Riding
Allen Tate praised the volume in the New Republic, prophesying a brilliant future for Riding. When John Gould Fletcher in The Criterion called her poems derivative, Graves wrote to criticise both Fletcher for being...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Laura Riding
Although this volume appeared later, its second chapter was the root of the concluding chapter of A Survey of Modernist Poetry. Gertrude Stein is a test case here: T. S. Eliot is hauled over...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Laura Riding
The volume was, says Elizabeth Friedmann , largely a response to the ideas of Wyndham Lewis .
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
114
LR sets out to free the poet from the restrictions imposed by the synthetic or collective notion...
Intertextuality and Influence Laura Riding
Reviews were good in the main. Not only did LR 's friend and associate Jacob Bronowski assert in Granta that that the poems state the truth with a clarity which is transparent and literal,
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books.
217
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Ridler
AR wrote that the two great influences on her as a poet (because they helped her to find her own voice) were Sir Thomas Wyatt and W. H. Auden . Eliot , too, was inescapable...
Literary responses Anne Ridler
When Anne Bradby (later AR ) plucked up courage to show some early poems to T. S. Eliot (though not requesting publication by Faber and Faber ), she was encouraged by his advice: I should...
Textual Features Anne Ridler
Her introduction to the first selection, she said later, was more influenced by Coleridge than by Charles Williams .
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.
96
It was an important feature of the volume, ranging itself alongside such prestigious Shakespeare critics...
Material Conditions of Writing Anne Ridler
Ambiguity in English Verse Rhythms in this volume was the only result of a projected book on metrics which T. S. Eliot had suggested, and which AR had worked on during the second world war...
Textual Production Anne Ridler
Of the fourteen poets invited to read four were women: Edith Sitwell , Kathleen Raine , Dorothy Wellesley , and Ridler. Sitwell and T. S. Eliot sat on either side of the Chair of the evening, Desmond MacCarthy .
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.
141
Publishing Anne Ridler
AR 's first volume published with Faber & Faber benefited from the patronage of her former bosses there. T. S. Eliot recommended its publication,
Ridler, Anne. “Working for T.S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence”. Poetry Review, Vol.
73
, No. 1, pp. 46-9.
49
and the first edition appeared on expensive hand-made paper, which...
Publishing Anne Ridler
It had been commissioned by Martin Browne , the lessee of the Mercury Theatre, who, inspired by the success of T. S. Eliot 's Murder in the Cathedral, set out to encourage poets to...
Literary responses Anne Ridler
AR later judged that her dialogue was pretty good but her technical capacity unequal to her ambitious theme.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.
146
The play was well received on opening night and throughout its run; Eliot was enthusiastic, and...

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