About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherHarvard University Press

ISBN-100674931505

ISBN-139780674931503

eBay Product ID (ePID)1136075

Product Key Features

Number of Pages160 Pages

Publication NameUse of Poetry and Use of Criticism : Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1986

SubjectPoetry, European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

TypeTextbook

AuthorT.S. Eliot

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism

SeriesThe Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.4 in

Item Weight7.7 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

LCCN86-011926

Dewey Edition19

ReviewsThe Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism is among the most interesting and important of Eliot's critical essays...the book is alive with dramatic tensions., The most influential critic of the twentieth century reconsiders the English critical tradition. This book is central to the Modernist remapping of literary history.

Series Volume Number39

Dewey Decimal821/.009

Table Of Content1. Introduction 2. Apology for the Countness of Pembroke 3. The Age of Dryden 4. Wordsworth and Coleridge 5. Shelley and Keats 6. Matthew Arnold 7. The Modern Mind 8. Conclusion

SynopsisThe elder statesman of literary modernism traces the reciprocal relationship between poet and critic. No individual did more to shape the trajectory of twentieth-century criticism than T. S. Eliot. A self-described "classicist," his repudiation of the Romantic era's emphasis on subjectivity and self-expression in favor of a rigorous analytical focus on literary tradition influenced critics for generations to come. Yet Eliot was not entirely comfortable with his place in the canon. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," the universally anthologized 1919 essay that laid out his views in their most programmatic form, was, in his own estimation, "the most juvenile" of his critical writings. He believed that the 1932-1933 Norton Lectures collected here, in contrast, reflected his mature thought. In place of the sweeping pronouncements of his earlier work, these lectures offer a shrewd and sensitive account of criticism as a product of history. Beginning with the development of the field in the age of John Dryden, when critics turned poetry into the province of an intellectual aristocracy, Eliot explores how a long line of English poet-critics responded to the unique demands of their time. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Arnold, and Richards each mined the past to offer a fresh answer to the question, "what is poetry?" And Eliot brilliantly shows how the poetic strengths--and shortcomings--of each were intimately connected to their critical work. Trenchant and authoritative, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism reveals that Eliot himself is no exception to this rule. His deep erudition, his existential doubts, and his yearning for order animate these lectures as much as his best poems., The 1932-33 Norton Lectures are among the best and most important of T. S. Eliot's critical writings. Tracing the rise of literary self-consciousness from the Elizabethan period to his own day, Eliot does not simply examine the relation of criticism to poetry, but invites us to "start with the supposition that we do not know what poetry is, or what it does or ought to do, or of what use it is; and try to find out, in examining the relation of poetry to criticism, what the use of both of them is." Eliot begins with the appearance of poetry criticism in the age of Dryden, when poetry became the province of an intellectual aristocracy rather than part of the mind and popular tradition of a whole people. Wordsworth and Coleridge, in their attempt to revolutionize the language of poetry at the end of the eighteenth century, made exaggerated claims for poetry and the poet, culminating in Shelley's assertion that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind." And, in the doubt and decaying moral definitions of the nineteenth century, Arnold transformed poetry into a surrogate for religion. By studying poetry and criticism in the context of its time, Eliot suggests that we can learn what is permanent about the nature of poetry, and makes a powerful case for both its autonomy and its pluralism in this century., T. S. Eliot believed the 1932-1933 Norton Lectures collected here, rather than his more famous 1919 essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," represented his mature critical thought. His deep erudition, his existential doubt, and his yearning for order animate these lectures as much as his best poems., The elder statesman of literary modernism traces the reciprocal relationship between poet and critic. No individual did more to shape the trajectory of twentieth-century criticism than T. S. Eliot. A self-described "classicist," his repudiation of the Romantic era's emphasis on subjectivity and self-expression in favor of a rigorous analytical focus on literary tradition influenced critics for generations to come. Yet Eliot was not entirely comfortable with his place in the canon. "Tradition and the Individual Talent," the universally anthologized 1919 essay that laid out his views in their most programmatic form, was, in his own estimation, "the most juvenile" of his critical writings. He believed that the 1932-1933 Norton Lectures collected here, in contrast, reflected his mature thought. In place of the sweeping pronouncements of his earlier work, these lectures offer a shrewd and sensitive account of criticism as a product of history. Beginning with the development of the field in the age of John Dryden, when critics turned poetry into the province of an intellectual aristocracy, Eliot explores how a long line of English poet-critics responded to the unique demands of their time. Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Arnold, and Richards each mined the past to offer a fresh answer to the question, "what is poetry?" And Eliot brilliantly shows how the poetic strengths--and shortcomings--of each were intimately connected to their critical work. Trenchant and authoritative, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism reveals that Eliot himself is no exception to this rule. His deep erudition, his existential doubts, and his yearning for order¬ animate these lectures as much as his best poems.

LC Classification NumberPR503.E45 1986