T. S. Eliot and American Poetry (Volume 1) - Hardcover

Oser, Lee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 082621181X ISBN 13: 9780826211811

Publisher: University of Missouri, 1998

Synopsis

Written in a fine and lucid prose style, T. S. Eliot and American Poetry presents a critical study of Eliot's major poems as it examines what America means to its poets. Eliot's contribution to a poetic dialogue on this subject with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, and other literary figures plays a significant role in this groundbreaking study.

Investigating Eliot's literary inheritance through his familial traditions, represented particularly by his mother, Charlotte Eliot, and in terms of the American Renaissance, Lee Oser addresses all phases of Eliot's career as a poet. Following an introduction that reevaluates the importance of Poe and Whitman for Eliot and modernism, the discussion proceeds from Eliot's reaction against the progressive ethos of late Puritan culture, to the appearance in his writing of numerous figures of exile and disinheritance as an expression of lost American patrimony, to his flight from the realm of history, and his eventual return to the spiritual and cultural traditions of New England. A final chapter weighs Eliot's impact on Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, and Elizabeth Bishop.

Through its dialectical view of American literary and intellectual history, T. S. Eliot and American Poetry constructs a practical methodology for comparing Eliot with other American poets. Juxtaposing Eliot's poems, lectures, and essays (including generous excerpts from Eliot's uncollected prose) with landmark texts by Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and many others, Oser engages in a deeper analysis of Eliot's Americanness than has hitherto been possible. In addressing Eliot's treatment of America as symbol and topos, the work presents a multifaceted chronicle of Eliot's development that enriches formalist and historicist approaches alike.

T. S. Eliot and American Poetry makes numerous original contributions to the field of literary history. No previous work has so richly pursued Eliot's literary and familial inheritance, as well as his legacy to American poetry; the result is a highly nuanced perspective on contemporary debates about poetry, criticism, and culture.

About this title

About the Author:

Lee Oser is an Edward Bennett Williams Fellow and Assistant Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

From Library Journal:

Since Eliot identified so deliberately with all things British, his Americanness is often played down in studies of his work. Oser (English, Millikin Univ.) examines the poet's American literary heritage from such writers as Emerson, Poe, Whitman, and Hawthorne as well as his mother (Charlotte Stearns Eliot) and grandfather (William Greenleaf Eliot). The author also analyzes Eliot's influence on later American poets like Robert Lowell, John Ashbery, and Elizabeth Bishop. Oser's study is unique in that, as he notes, other works on Eliot's American roots have different focuses: Lyndall Gordon's Eliot's Early Years (LJ 1/15/77) and Eliot's New Life (LJ 9/1/88) are critical biographies, and Eric Sigg's The American T.S. Eliot (Cambridge Univ., 1989) concentrates on the poet's early works, while Oser includes later ones such as Four Quartets, considered to be Eliot's major poetic achievement. This scholarly and well-documented study is best suited for academic libraries.?Denise J. Stankovics, Rockville P.L., Vernon, CT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 082621181X
• ISBN 13: 9780826211811
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192