The Savage and the City in the Work of T.S. Eliot (Oxford English Monographs) - Hardcover

Crawford, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019812869X ISBN 13: 9780198128694

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1987

Synopsis

The twin concerns of primitive and metropolitan life nourished T.S. Eliot's imagination through his childhood and student years and developed to mould and underpin his writing. Ranging from Dr Sweany of St Louis and Eliot's intense interest in anthropology to his drawing on Victorian urban writing and popular American models, this book throws new light on Eliot's major works, particularly on the earlier ones culminating in "The Waste Land" and "Sweeney Agonistes". In understanding how a great poet obsessively and continually brought together "savages" and the sophisticated as well as slum-dwelling members of modern urban society, we can see his work afresh as possessing remarkable and profound excitement as well as unusual integrity.

About this title

Review

'Crawford's study is illuminating ... Crawford's book establishes anthropology as the major external influence on Eliot's poetry ... a new Scottish poet-critic is announced therefore, and his contribution could be immense. We could do with more' Glasgow Herald

'a powerful and stimulating book' Times Higher Educational Supplement

'an important contribution to the still evolving perception of Eliot's work and eminently readable' Cencrastus

`it is ... from Eliot's non-literary reading that Crawford retrieves the most illuminating information' Brendan Jackson, The English Association

`an important contribution to the still evolving perception of Eliot's work and eminently readable' Thom Nairn, Cencrastus

'fine study' English Studies

About the Author

Robert Crawford is at University of St Andrews.

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019812869X
• ISBN 13: 9780198128694
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 262