Criticism of Eliot has ignored the public dimension of his life and work. His poetry is often seen as the private record of an internal spiritual struggle. Professor Cooper shows how Eliot deliberately addressed a North Atlantic 'mandarinate' fearful of social disintegration during the politically turbulent 1930s. Almost immediately following publication, Four Quartets was accorded canonical status as a work that promised a personal harmony divorced from the painful disharmonies of the emerging postwar world. Cooper connects Eliot's careers as banker, director and editor to a much wider cultural agenda. He aimed to reinforce established social structures during a period of painful political transition. This powerful and original study re-establishes the public context in which Eliot's work was received and understood. It will become an essential reference work for all interested in a wider understanding of Eliot and of Anglo-American cultural relations.

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 career It 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 philosophical It charts the surge in critical interest in T.S. Eliot since the early 1990s It provides an illuminating insight into a poet, writer, and critic who continues to define the literary landscape of the last century

Julius's critically acclaimed study (looking both at the detail of Eliot's deployment of anti-Semitic discourse and at the role it played in his greater literary undertaking) has provoked a reassessment of Eliot's work among poets, scholars, critics and readers, which will invigorate debate for some time to come.

A concise and clear guide to the complexities of T.S.Eliot's poetry, with easy to follow structure and chapters on Eliot's major texts, all in chronological order.

"Of the three voices of poetry, here defined by T.S. Eliot, the first voice is that of the poet talking to himself, directly expressing his own thoughts. His first obligation is to achieve absolute clarity for himself, often through the most painful effort and at the cost of being termed consciously unintelligible. The second voice is that of the poet adressing an audience, offering a message, as in the poem intended to instruct or to persuade, or the poem written to amuse. The third voice is that of the poet when he is creating a character, as in a poetic drama. It is Mr Eliot's belief that in every poem, from the private meditation to the epic or the drama, more than one voice is to be heard; these he challenges us to distinguish"--Front jacket flap.