T S Eliot The Poet As Christian

T.S. Eliot was arguably the most important poet of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, there remains much scope for reconsidering the content, form and expressive nature of Eliot’s religious poetry, and this edited collection pays particular attention to the multivalent spiritual dimensions of his popular poems, such as ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘The Waste Land’, ‘Journey of the Magi’, ‘The Hollow Men’, and ‘Choruses’ from The Rock. Eliot’s sustained popularity is an intriguing cultural phenomenon, given that the religious voice of Eliot’s poetry is frequently antagonistic towards the ‘unchurched’ or secular reader: ‘You! Hypocrite lecteur!’ This said, Eliot’s spiritual development was not a logical matter and his devotional poetry is rarely didactic. The volume presents a rich and powerful range of essays by leading and emerging T.S. Eliot and literary modernist scholars, considering the doctrinal, religious, humanist, mythic and secular aspects of Eliot’s poetry: Anglo-Catholic belief (Barry Spurr), the integration of doctrine and poetry (Tony Sharpe), the modernist mythopoeia of Four Quartets (Michael Bell), the ‘felt significance’ of religious poetry (Andy Mousley), ennui as a modern evil (Scott Freer), Eliot’s pre-conversion encounter with ‘modernist theology’ (Joanna Rzepa), Eliot’s ‘religious agrarianism’ (Jeremy Diaper), the maternal allegory of Ash Wednesday (Matthew Geary), and an autobiographical reading of religious conversion inspired by Eliot in a secular age (Lynda Kong). This book is a timely addition to the ‘return of religion’ in modernist studies in the light of renewed interest in T.S. Eliot scholarship.

By comparing and contrasting the pre-conversion and the post-conversion poetics and poetic practices of T.S. Eliot, this book elucidates the responsibilities and opportunities for a poet who is also Christian. This book is the second in a trilogy which includes T.S. Eliot, Lancelot Andrewes, and the Word.

This volume presents a reading of poems directly related to the poet's quest for God. This book illuminates those aspects which reveal his importance as a religious writer, the journey of the man in search of God.

Christianity and Culture- The Idea of a Christian Society AND Notes towards the Definition of Culture By T. S. Eliot. Originally published in 1940. Contents include: The Idea of a Christian Society I Preface 3 Notes 52 Postscript 69 Appendix 71 Notes towards the Definition of Culture 79 Preface 83 Introduction 85 i. The Three Senses of Culture 93 n. The Class and the Elite 107 in. Unity and Diversity: The Region 123 iv. Unity and Diversity: Sect and Cult 141 v, A Note on Culture and Politics 158 vi. Notes on Education and Culture: and Conclusion 171 APPENDIX: The Unity of European Culture. Christianity and Culture has appeared too recently for me to have made use of it. And I am deeply indebted to the works of Jacques Maritain, es pecially his Humanisme integral. 1 trust that the reader will understand from the beginning that this book does not make any plea for a religious revival in a sense with which we are already familiar. That is a task for which I am incompetent, and the term seems to me to imply a possible separation of religious feeling from religious thinking which I do not accept or which I do not find ac ceptable for our present difficulties. An anonymous writer has recently observed in The New English Weekly ( July 13, 1939) that men have lived by spiritual institutions ( of some kind) in every society, and also by political institutions and, indubitably, by eco nomic activities. Admittedly, they have, at different periods, tended to put their trust mainly in one of the three as the real cement of society, but at no time have they wholly excluded the others, because it is impossible to do so. This is an important, and in its context valuable, distinc tion; but it should be clear that what I am concerned with here is not spiritual institutions in their separated aspect, but the organisation of values, and a direction of religious thought which must inevitably proceed to a criticism of political and economic systems. CHAPTER I: THE fact that a problem will certainly take a long time to solve, and that it will demand the attention of many minds for several generations, is no justification for postponing the study. And, in times of emergency, it may prove in the long run that the problems we have postponed or ignored, rather than those we have failed to attack success fully, will return to plague us. Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow: but our permanent dif ficulties are difficulties of every moment. The subject with which I am concerned in the following pages is one to which I am convinced we ought to turn our attention now, if we hope ever to be relieved of the immediate perplexities that fill our minds. It is urgent because it is fundamental; and its urgency is the reason for a person like myself attempting to address, on a subject beyond his usual scope, that public which is likely to read what he writes on other subjects. This is a subject which I could, no doubt, handle much better were I a profound scholar in any of several fields. But I am not writ ing for scholars, but for people like myself; some defects may be compensated by some advantages; and what one must be judged by, scholar or no, is not particularised knowledge but one's total harvest of thinking, feeling, living and observ ing human beings. While the practice of poetry need not in itself confer wis dom or accumulate knowledge, it ought at least to train the mind in one habit of universal value: that of analysing the meanings of words: of those that one employs oneself, as well as the words of others.

The culmination of a trilogy that began with T.S. Eliot, Lancelot Andrewes, and the Word, and continued with T.S. Eliot: The Poet as Christian, this gracefully executed new book brings to a triumphant conclusion the unique effort to pinpoint and identify the Christian characteristics of Eliot's poetic art. The book offers a close but companionable reading of each of the complex poems that make up Four Quartets, the essay-poem that is Eliot's masterwork. Focusing on the range of speaking voices dramatized, Atkins reveals for the first time the Incarnational form that governs the work's 'purposive movement' toward purification and fulfilment of points of view that were represented earlier in the poems.

"Barry Spurr's eagerly-awaited, definitive study of T.S. Eliot's Anglo-Catholic belief and practice shows how the poet is religion shaped his life and work for almost forty years, until his death in 1965. The author examines Eliot's formal adoption of Anglo-Catholicism, in 1927, as the culmination of his intellectual, cultural, artistic, spiritual and personal development to that point. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the unique influence that Anglo-Catholicismis doctrinal and devotional principles, and its social teaching, had on Eliot's poetry, plays, prose and personal life. An informed presentation and discussion of Anglo-Catholicism at the time of Eliot's conversion and through the subsequent decades of his Christian faith and practice. Significant new material from correspondence and diaries which sheds light on Eliot's thought, poetry and prose. This book is essential reading for all scholars and readers of T.S. Eliot and his circle; for students and devotees ofAnglo-Catholicism, and scholars of the interaction between literature and theology, especially in the twentieth century. It will also be of use to senior and Honours-level undergraduates and postgraduate research students working in the fields of Modernism and its principles and belief systems, and for students of religion, especially Western Christianity and Anglicanism."

Barry Spurr's eagerly-awaited, definitive study of T.S. Eliot's Anglo-Catholic belief and practice shows how the poet is religion shaped his life and work for almost forty years, until his death in 1965. The author examines Eliot's formal adoption of Anglo-Catholicism, in 1927, as the culmination of his intellectual, cultural, artistic, spiritual and personal development to that point. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the unique influence that Anglo-Catholicismis doctrinal and devotional principles, and its social teaching, had on Eliot's poetry, plays, prose and personal life. An informed presentation and discussion of Anglo-Catholicism at the time of Eliot's conversion and through the subsequent decades of his Christian faith and practice. Significant new material from correspondence and diaries which sheds light on Eliot's thought, poetry and prose. This book is essential reading for all scholars and readers of T.S. Eliot and his circle; for students and devotees ofAnglo-Catholicism, and scholars of the interaction between literature and theology, especially in the twentieth century. It will also be of use to senior and Honours-level undergraduates and postgraduate research students working in the fields of Modernism and its principles and belief systems, and for students of religion, especially Western Christianity and Anglicanism.