Eliot’s Four Quartets is arguably the finest long poem in modern English literature. It is also one that presents considerable problems of interpretation. In Word Unheard, first published in 1969, Blamires aims to unravel some of these problems by guiding the reader line by line through the poem, blending paraphrase with commentary. Blamires pays particular attention to the philosophical and theological dimensions of the poem and to its multifarious personal, historical and literary allusions. This title will be of interests to students of literature.

Between 1749 and 1850--the formative years of the so-called Jewish Question in Germany--the emancipation debates over granting full civil and political rights to Jews provided the topical background against which all representations of Jewish characters and concerns in literary texts were read. Helfer focuses sharply on these debates and demonstrates through close readings of works by Gotthold Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, Achim von Arnim, Annette von Droste- Hülshoff, Adalbert Stifter, and Franz Grillparzer how disciplinary practices within the field of German studies have led to systematic blind spots in the scholarship on anti-Semitism to date.

This introductory book takes the reader through literary history from the Renaissance to Postmodernism, and considers individual texts as paradigms which can both reflect and unsettle their broader linguistic and cultural contexts. Richard Bradford provides detailed readings of individual texts which emphasize their relation to literary history and broader socio-cultural contexts, and which take into account developments in structuralism and postmodernism. Texts include poems by Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Keats, Hopkins, Browning, Pound, Eliot, Carlos Williams, Auden, Larkin and Geoffrey Hill.

This book offers an exciting new approach to T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets as it shows why it should be read both closely and in relation to Eliot's other works, notably the poems The Waste Land, 'The Hollow Men,' and Ash-Wednesday.

Into the Heart of God offers warm, personal reflections for daily devotion on the spiritual journey that all of us, in some way or other, must travel to seek God.

"The poems, . . . some of the poetic drama (particularly Sweeney Agonistes), and relevant sections of prose criticism, are discussed in detail and placed in relation to the development of Eliot's oeuvre, and more briefly to his life and a wider context of philosophical and religious enquiry" --Introduction.

“The next time I teach Eliot to undergrads I will assign this swift, witty, enjoyable invitation to T. S. Eliot’s work and thought. Maddrey knows everything about Eliot, but he grinds no axe which frees professors and students to grind their own. Scrupulously footnoted for professional use, not short but concise, it is stuffed with unfamiliar and apt quotations. Maddrey quotes a 1949 interview about The Cocktail Party, in which Eliot said, ‘If there is nothing more in the play than what I was aware of meaning, then it must be a pretty thin piece of work.’ There’s the New Criticism in 25 words, 21 of them monosyllables. Eliot asks us to quit asking what he thought and to do some thinking ourselves. This book will help.” —George J. Leonard, author of Into the Light of Things and The End of Innocence. Professor of Interdisciplinary Humanities, San Francisco State University Though he was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Harvard University, at the age of 26, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) emigrated to England, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. Influenced equally by his formative years in the New World and his experiences in London during and after World War I, Eliot strove to reconcile a variety of conflicting ideas while trapped in an unhappy marriage—a struggle that gave rise to some of the greatest poems of the 20th century. In Simply Eliot, Joseph Maddrey plumbs the emotional and intellectual life of the man whom critic Edmund Wilson called "one of our only authentic poets.” Taking The Waste Land (written in the aftermath of World War I) and Four Quartets (published 1936–1942) as reference points, Maddrey chronicles Eliot's attempts to create a coherent worldview, and explores how his religious conversion in 1927 led to a spiritual rebirth that allowed him to produce his ultimate poetic statement. Making use of previously unavailable materials, including over 5,000 personal letters, Maddrey offers an intimate and incisive portrait of Eliot, and illustrates his continued relevance as both a Romantic and Classical poet, as well as a religious and spiritual thinker.