Customer Reviews

Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot

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An excellent selection of essays by Eliot. He is at his best in many of these-- ascerbic, crisp and correct. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who have opinions about the ideas and theories of Eliot, but who have never read his essays themselves. I suggest that before taking umbrage at what he is supposed to have said, a student of the modernists should at least read a bit of what he did say.

This selection is broken into two categories: Literary Criticism and Social and Religious Criticism. Essays such as "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and "What is a Classic?" (compare and contrast with G. Stein in "What are Masterpieces?") are particularly worth the time to read.

I wish that Kermode had included more of the social and religious essays and that he had not excerpted as heavily as he did throughout the book. I would personally rather read a longer book consisting of complete essays than having such a high percentage of the selection consisting of excerpts. Of the meagre three essays in the social and religious section, two were excerpted rather than being published in their entirety. Too bad.

Eliot's reputation has taken a beating in the last 20 years. He has been charged with anti-semitism, racism, elitism, and even misogyny. All of these charges are basically true. Nevertheless, as a critic his judgements are sound and dead-on. Read either "Traditon and the individual Talent" or "Dante" from this book and tell me if you think I am wrong. The book is worth the price for these two essays alone.

I found this book to be a useful compendium of essays that are usually scattered or incompletely represented in anthologies. It's an excellent supplement for a course on Eliot's work or to learn more about his critical perspectives and how they shifted over time. Very worthwhile.

A good selection of prose from T. S. Eliot. After years of reading, I still find his prose more effective and more useful than his poetry. (I know -- sheer heresy.) Eliot places great emphasis on The Tradition and on an impersonal approach to art, an emphasis which aspiring writers of today would be wise to heed. Like Matthew Arnold, Eliot's criticism is dogmatic, and right. The reader's only wish is that this collection included more.

I've recently taken a personal interest in T.S. Eliot. When I went to talk to one of my professors, an Eliot scholar, about Eliot's poems, he gave me a copy of The Selected Prose. I will admit that I was a little worried about reading prose written by a well-known poet, but luckily Eliot's prose writing is as virtuosic as his poetry. His essays are both easily enjoyable and incredibly beautiful, and I found myself noting passages for both their insight and the quality of the prose. This collection is helpfully split up into three types of essay, essays in generalization, appreciations of individual authors, and social and religious criticism, which are categories that Eliot described when looking back on his writing. This makes it easy to read the kind of essay you feel like reading at the moment while skipping things you might not be interested in, and makes the essays flow together nicely.

I found the essays in generalization to be the most interesting, as they dealt with criticism, theory, aesthetics, poetics, and the use of poetry and criticism. His essay on "Verse Libre" was a short but thorough look at the misconceptions surrounding supposedly "free verse" poetry, and what makes poems without a strict meter or rhyme scheme good. Easy to read, and with lovely quotable passages like "Freedom is only truly freedom when it appears against the background of an artificial limitation," this essay should be assigned reading for poetry students everywhere. His essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" should likewise be required reading. In this essay, Eliot argues that modern writers can only be evaluated in light of their relation to the past, and that classics are made by how they fit into and change our perception of the course of tradition. Eliot's essays on criticism are equally useful, stressing that critics focus on the facts of the content and structure of a piece rather than writing florid essays about how a work made them feel. "When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts." With a brilliant mind and a way with words, Eliot is an excellent essayist on the subject of literature.

While I loved his essays of generalization, I found the section on individual authors slightly less helpful, though not any less well-written. Because I had not read many of the authors he was writing on, I couldn't really appreciate the essays as well as I would have liked. On the other hand, his essay on a few poets made me eager to add them to my to-read list, and his praise of Joyce made me want to quit being such a chicken and pick up his books already. For those who may be more well-read than I, this section of the essays may be more useful.

While I found this collection as a whole to be very informative and eye-opening, there were a few essays that I did not enjoy, and a few points about which I disagreed with Eliot. His emphasis on Latin being the most universal language to Westerners was a bit weird, and had a little too much classical studies bias for me to really buy into it completely. His essays on religion and culture were, at least to me, disappointing. He talked about Christianity as if it were a threatened minority, when of course Christians are both the majority of the population and of governments. His fears of the secularization of society and the adaptable nature of anything other than Christian morality seemed very close-minded to me, which was surprising to see in a man whose ideas are otherwise so expansive and cutting-edge. Since he was a convert to Anglicanism, I guess I can understand his need to do what he saw as defending Christianity, but I feel that he went too far and came off as close-minded. Luckily for us, his poems, even those that are overtly religious like The Four Quartets, lack that pedantic dogmatism and remain focused on the personal contemplative mysteries of his religion, and are therefore enjoyable by all.

Overall, I would say that Eliot's essays are well worth reading. Even when I don't agree with his subject matter or think that his logic follows, the writing is always superb. His insights into literature, especially in the essays at the beginning of this collection, were enlightening and enthralling. If you at all interested in Eliot, who was an influential critic and cultural icon of his day as well as an incredible poet and playwright, I would highly recommend this collection.

Rating: 4 stars
Recommendations: If you're a literature geek like me, these might be the essays for you. I especially recommend the essays of generalization at the beginning of the book.

An excellent collection of T.S. Eliot's prose--a prose that sparkles with all the wit, intelligence, and feeling that Eliot pours into his poetry. I found that even when the subject didn't particularly interest me, Eliot did. If you've only read his poetry and drama, I recommend checking out his prose. This collection of essays on literature, culture, and authors is a good place to start. This anthology covers a wide breath of Eliot's writing, and a wide number of topics.

Wonderful book, a treasure; it arrived quickly and in beautiful shape. I highly recommend this book.

When I was in graduate school Eliot was considered the great literary critic of the twentieth century, the person who set the tone . His understanding of the Literary Tradition and how each new author altered the way we read the whole was part of the ' religion' of literary studies. So too his essays on Dante and on the Metaphysicals ( his placing Donne at the center of the Tradition) and his famous reading of Hamlet in which he argued that there was emotion in excess of the objective situation, i.e. that there was no appropriate 'objective correlative'. As a graduate student I somehow went along with the crowd and did not have much to say about Bleider with a Burbank,and Bluestein with a Cigar' i.e. the culturally anti- Semitic Eliot. That Anti- Semitism along with a certain racism and anti- Feminism are too we have learned parts of the Literary Tradition .So some of the most beautiful and great works of literary creation are marred by moral failings. How ironic that Eliot who was a spiritual teacher in time should have been so faulty in this way .