Reflecting the surge of critical interest in Eliot renewed in recent years,A Companion to T.S. Eliot introduces the 'new' Eliot to readers and educators by examining the full body of his works and career. Leading scholars in the field provide a fresh and fully comprehensive collection of contextual and critical essays on his life and achievement.It compiles the most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment available of Eliot's work and careerIt explores the powerful forces that shaped Eliot as a writer and thinker, analyzing his body of work and assessing his oeuvre in a variety of contexts: historical, cultural, social, and philosophicalIt charts the surge in critical interest in T.S. Eliot since the early 1990sIt provides an illuminating insight into a poet, writer, and critic who continues to define the literary landscape of the last century

David E. Chinitz, Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago, is the author ofT. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide (2003) andWhich Sin to Bear? Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes (2013). He is currently first vice president of the Modernist Studies Association and past president of the T. S. Eliot Society.

Notes on Contributors viii

Preface xiv

Acknowledgments xvi

Abbreviations Used for Works by T. S. Eliot xvii

Part I:Influences 1

1 The Poet and the Pressure Chamber: Eliot's Life 3
Anthony Cuda

2 Eliot's Ghosts: Tradition and its Transformations 15
Sanford Schwartz

3 T. S. Eliot and the Symbolist City 27
Barry J. Faulk

4 Not One, Not Two: Eliot and Buddhism 40
Christina Hauck

5 Yes and No: Eliot and Western Philosophy 53
Jewel Spears Brooker

6 A Vast Wasteland? Eliot and Popular Culture 66
David E. Chinitz

7 Mind, Myth, and Culture: Eliot and Anthropology 79
Marc Manganaro

8 "Where are the eagles and the trumpets?": Imperial Decline and Eliot's Development 91
Vincent Sherry

Part II:Works 105

9 Searching for the Early Eliot:Inventions of the March Hare 107
Jayme Stayer

10Prufrock and Other Observations: A Walking Tour 120
Frances Dickey

11 Disambivalent Quatrains 133
Jeffrey M. Perl

12 "Gerontion": The Mind of Postwar Europe and the Mind(s) of Eliot 145
Edward Brunner

13 "Fishing, with the arid plain behind me": Diffi culty, Deferral, and Form inThe Waste Land 157
Michael Coyle

14 The Enigma of "The Hollow Men" 168
Elisabeth Däumer

15Sweeney Agonistes: A Sensational Snarl 179
Christine Buttram

16 "Having to construct": Dissembly Lines in the "Ariel" Poems andAsh-Wednesday 191
Tony Sharpe

17 "The inexplicable mystery of sound":Coriolan, Minor Poems, Occasional Verses 204
Gareth Reeves

18 Coming to Terms withFour Quartets 216
Lee Oser

19 "Away we go": Poetry and Play inOld Possum's Book of Practical Cats and Andrew Lloyd Webber'sCats 228
Sarah Bay-Cheng

20 Eliot's 1930s Plays:The Rock, Murder in the Cathedral, andThe Family Reunion 239
Randy Malamud

21 Eliot's "Divine" Comedies:The Cocktail Party, The Confidential Clerk, andThe Elder Statesman 251
Carol H. Smith

22 Taking LiteratureSeriously: Essays to 1927 263
Leonard Diepeveen

23 He Do the Critic in Different Voices: The Literary Essays after 1927 275
Richard Badenhausen

24 In Times of Emergency: Eliot's Social Criticism 287
John Xiros Cooper

Part III:Contexts 299

25 Eliot's Poetics: Classicism and Histrionics 301
Lawrence Rainey

26 T. S. Eliot and Something Called Modernism 311
Ann Ardis

27 Confl ict and Concealment: Eliots Approach to Women and Gender 323
Cyrena Pondrom

28 Eliot and "Race": Jews, Irish, and Blacks 335
Bryan Cheyette

29 "The pleasures of higher vices": Sexuality in Eliot's Work 350
Patrick Query

30 "An occupation for the saint": Eliot as a Religious Thinker 363
Kevin J. H. Dettmar

31 Eliot's Politics 376
Michael Levenson

32 Keeping Critical Thought Alive: Eliot's Editorship of theCriterion 388
Jason Harding

33 Making Modernism: Eliot as Publisher 399
John Timberman Newcomb

34 Eliot and the New Critics 411
Gail McDonald

35 "T. S. Eliot rates socko!": Modernism, Obituary, and Celebrity 423
Aaron Jaffe

36 Eliot's Critical Reception: "The quintessence of twenty-fi rst-century poetry" 436
Nancy K. Gish

37 Radical Innovation and Pervasive Infl uence:The Waste Land 449
James Longenbach

Bibliography of Works by T. S. Eliot 460

Index 463