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English Literature Author: T. S. Eliot
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by David Chinitz
Loyola University
Chicago, Illinois
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More About T. S. Eliot...
T. S. Eliot
1888-1965
American/British
Introduction
Major Works
Chronology
Introduction
T. S. Eliot was the public face of modernist literature and arguably the most influential poet of the twentieth century. His work was intense, allusive, and (to use his own word) difficult, yet his reputation and celebrity were so powerful by the 1950s that audiences numbering in the thousands packed into lecture halls and even athletic stadiums to hear him read from his work or deliver an address on literary criticism.
 Modernist Literature
Eliot was a leader in the modernist rejection of conventional poetic forms and high-flown, artificial language. His work expresses his sense of the "anarchy and futility" of modern life: its inhumanity, its delusions of "progress," the decline of human values and community in its oppressive cities, the void created by the disappearance of the spiritual in a world dominated by technology. His 1922 poem The Waste Land is perhaps the ultimate expression of this disillusioned view, which struck so resonant a chord in so many readers that its central metaphor (modern life as an arid, nightmarish "waste land") became the century's dominant term of self-criticism. The experimental techniques of the poem -- its collagelike juxtaposition of narrative fragments and allusions from various times, places, and levels of culture and its musical synthesis of many different speaking voices and poetic styles -- exerted a powerful influence on other writers in both poetry and prose. Readers found themselves moved and haunted by Eliot's poetry despite their initial bafflement by its complex surface.
The Waste Land
Eliot was equally influential as a critic. His example encouraged others to challenge the received canons of "taste" in favor of the close reading and careful examination of literary texts. Eliot's essays helped restore the English "metaphysical" poets (http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/metaphysical.htm) (e.g., Donne and Marvell), long dismissed as minor writers, to prominence, while calling into question the high standing accorded to many revered figures of the more recent Romantic and Victorian periods. His conservative social criticism, which drew a good deal of respectful attention in its time, has dated badly in comparison with his other work.
Romantic Period
Victorian Period
As founder and editor of an important literary quarterly, the Criterion, and as an editor and director of the British publishing firm Faber and Faber, Eliot brought such European writers as Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, and Hermann Hesse to the attention of English-speaking audiences, and he helped establish the next generation of English poets and critics (e.g., W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and William Empson). He also championed and published key writers of his own generation, such as James Joyce, Marianne Moore, Ezra Pound, and Djuna Barnes.
After his conversion to the Anglican Church in 1927, Eliot's work in both prose and poetry became more directly concerned with religion and its place in the modern world. At the same time, Eliot grew increasingly dissatisfied with the narrow coterie public he could reach with his printed poetry, and after 1930 he dedicated most of his creative energies to the theater, which, he speculated, could provide poets with a more socially useful venue for their skills with language and rhythm. Although Eliot's plays were all written in verse, he accommodated himself more and more to the expectations of modern middle-class audiences, to whom he hoped to communicate his vision of Christian spirituality, without which he felt life to be empty of meaning. In The Cocktail Party, Eliot struck a successful balance between his poetic and religious aspirations and the demands of the commercial theater, and the play became a popular success on Broadway and in London's West End. Over 15 years after the poet's death, Andrew Lloyd Weber turned Eliot's playful lyrics for children, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, into the longest-running musical blockbuster in Broadway history.
Major Works
Poetry:
- Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
- Poems (1920)
- The Waste Land (1922)
- The Hollow Men (1925)
- Ariel Poems (1927-1930)
- Ash-Wednesday (1930)
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
- Four Quartets (1943)
Plays:
- Sweeney Agoniste (1932)
- Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
- The Family Reunion (1939)
- The Cocktail Party (1950)
All the works listed above are available today in The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950.
Prose:
- The Sacred Wood (1920)
- Selected Essays (1932)
- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
- The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
- Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
- On Poetry and Poets (1957)
- The Letters of T. S. Eliot, Vol. I (1988)
Chronology
1888
Thomas Stearns Eliot born in St. Louis on September 26.
1910
Graduates from Harvard University. He spends the following academic year in Paris, where he studies at the Sorbonne.
1911
Eliot, aged 22-23, completes such early masterpieces as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Portrait of a Lady," and "Preludes." He begins study toward a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard.
1914
Travels to Germany on fellowship, but is forced to leave the country when World War I breaks out in August. He proceeds to England, where he soon meets Ezra Pound, who becomes his mentor and friend and who arranges for publication of Eliot's poems.
1915
Marries Vivien Haigh-Wood, a vivacious and liberated Englishwoman. The marriage is doomed by Vivien's constant physical and mental ill health and by Eliot's taut, languid personality.
1916
Completes his dissertation on F. H. Bradley. It is approved by the Harvard faculty, who offer him a professorship in philosophy; however, Eliot will never return for his dissertation defense and will never actually receive his doctorate.
1917
Eliot's first book, Prufrock and Other Observations, is published. Finding it difficult to earn a living in teaching and reviewing, he takes employment at Lloyds Bank in London. He begins publishing his key critical essays in such small-circulation, avant-garde periodicals as the Egoist, the Athenaeum, and Arts & Letters.
1919
Eliot's second book of poems, Ara Vos Prec, appears; this will be reprinted the next year as Poems.
1920
Publishes his first collection of critical prose, The Sacred Wood. He begins publishing essays in the Times Literary Supplement and the Dial, where he is able to influence a broader readership.
1921
Suffers a mental breakdown and undergoes therapy at Lausanne, where he finishes drafting The Waste Land. Pound, now residing in Paris, helps Eliot edit the disorganized manuscript into its current form.
1922
Publishes The Waste Land and founds his own literary quarterly, The Criterion.
1925
Leaves Lloyds Bank to assume an editorial position at Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber), a London publishing house.
1927
Eliot is confirmed in the Church of England and declares British citizenship.
1930
Publishes Ash-Wednesday, an uncharacteristically personal poem expressing his agonizing struggle for religious faith.
1932
Publishes Selected Essays 1917-1932.
1933
Returns to Harvard to deliver the annual Norton Lectures, subsequently published as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. He is legally separated from Vivien.
1935
Eliot's first full-length play, Murder in the Cathedral, is performed at Canterbury Cathedral.
1939
Eliot's second play, The Family Reunion, is performed. He publishes his first major work of social criticism, The Idea of a Christian Society. Depressed by the advent of World War II, he closes the Criterion.
1943
Publishes Four Quartets, a closely interwoven series of poems that had appeared singly between 1936 and 1942.
1947
Vivien dies in the asylum to which she has been committed for several years.
1948
Eliot extends his earlier social criticism in Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. He is awarded the Order of Merit and wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1950
Eliot's play The Cocktail Party, starring Alec Guinness, opens on Broadway to critical and popular acclaim. The play also has a successful run in London, where Rex Harrison stars.
1953
Eliot's play The Confidential Clerk is performed successfully in London and New York.
1957
At age 68, Eliot marries Valerie Fletcher, a devoted admirer, who is 30. This second marriage will bring him the happiness and tenderness that have evaded him for his entire adult life.
1958
The Elder Statesman, Eliot's last drama, plays to respectful but unenthusiastic reviews.
1965
Dies of emphysema on January 4.
David Chinitz is associate professor and director of graduate programs in the English department at Loyola University Chicago. His book, T. S. Eliot and the Cultural Divide, was published in 2003.
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