The English Eliot

the long version

This book supplies a neglected cultural context for T.S. Eliot's writings of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly Four Quartets, and explodes the widespread belief in Eliot's unproblematic commitment to England, and to 'Englishness'. In an attempt to contextualise his aspirations towards 'universality', and to show the important limitations on his nationalism, Eliot's later classicism is related to contemporary English and European movements in the visual arts and architecture. The topicality of his thinking about aesthetic form, language and nationhood is affirmed, in answer to critics who only see a reactionary and marginalised Eliot in the 1930s and 1940s. The book traces Eliot's classicism not only in linguistic and formalist terms but also in his construction of England in the Quartets and Quartets-related essays. His practice is related to the vigorous polemic concerning the definition of England found in the 1930s and 1940s, in material as diverse as landscape painting, advertising, travel literature and the detective novel. This is an original and provocative contribution to Eliot studies, and to the criticism of 'Englishness' that has started to appear in recent times. It will appeal not only to students and teachers of Eliot, but to all those interested in representations of nationality.