T. S. Eliot's Civilized Savage revisits this poet's drafts and canonical poetry in a sometimes dismissive critical arena . While contemporary readers emphasize Eliot's charged personal life, his anti-Semitism, his political conservatism, and his misogyny, Laurie MacDiarmid argues that although Eliot's poetics are shaped by private fears and fantasies, in many ways these are the ghosts of a culture that accepts and celebrates him. Comparing early versions with finished poems, this book explores the development and ramifications of Eliot's 'impersonal' poetic without losing sight of his influential, haunting work. Examining Eliot's neurotic relationship with women and his escape into women and his escape into spirituality, this book observes how Eliot conceived and eroticized poetry of worship and a poetic that dictated a sacrificial relationship to a savage God.

Primitive and metropolitan life nourished T. S. Eliot's imagination and emerged as recurrent themes in his work. Examining these twin concerns, Robert Crawford sheds new light on the poet's achievement--particularly those works that culminated in The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes--and clarifies Eliot's relentless obsession with "savages" and sophisticates.

Focusing on the literary works and career of British novelist E.M. Forster (1879-1970), this book argues that the writer adapted a much older literary form, the pastoral, to the purposes of writing about modern British experience. The publication points out that Forster's pastoral fiction challenged conventional parameters for the British novel, allowing for the emergence of his subsequent modernist classic, A Passage to India (including its critique of British imperialism). The monograph also provides a rationale for why Forster subsequently turned his artistic focus beyond Britain, embracing public radio under the direction of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Over a dozen new volumes of T. S. Eliot's poetry, prose, and letters have been published in the past decade. This collection presents unabashedly fresh approaches to Eliot, while simultaneously guiding readers through the new materials that are available for the first time outside of restricted archives. Eliot, the figurehead of literary modernism, continues to be someone whom critics love to hate (Misogynist! Reactionary! Anti-Semite!) and readers love to devour (Profound! Revolutionary! Resonant!). Why does one artist elicit such different responses? Eliot Now collects new and established voices in Eliot studies, integrating contemporary critical approaches with careful attention to the newly published materials. Whether grappling with the controversial new two-volume Poems, narrating the experience of opening Eliot's letters in the Emily Hale papers (until 2020 the “most famous sealed archive in the world”), or rereading his works through ecocritical or trans studies lenses, Eliot Now shows how this most effusively celebrated and heatedly criticized 20th-century writer continues to change the way we read literature in the 21st century. The collection concludes with six award-winning contemporary poets considering the influence of The Waste Land on poetry today.

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.

Presenting work from scholars of various ranks and locations—including Canada, Romania, Taiwan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the UK, and the USA—this volume offers critical perspectives on what is often considered the most important poem of literary modernism: T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The essays explore such topics as Eliot’s use of sources, his poem’s form, his influences, and his alleged misogyny. Building off contemporary work on Eliot and his poem, these essays illustrate the continued importance of The Waste Land in our understanding of the last century. This book should be of interest to students and scholars of modernism and modernist poetry.