The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry (Paperback)

by T. S. Eliot (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Consisting of 11 lectures Eliot delivered at universities, this collection explores his views on the relation of thought to feeling in verse.

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Description
Collected in one volume, Eliot’s lectures on metaphysical poetry provide a provocative view of Western intellectual and literary history and an exceptional insight into Eliot’s own intellectual development. “An incomparably stimulating experience in close reading,” said the New York Times. Edited and with an Introduction by Ronald Schuchard.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books (April 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156002566
• ISBN-13: 978-0156002561
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,215,846 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only for Eliot Devotees, January 14, 2008

By	T. McLaughlin "Interpretive delirium" (Chatham, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I can't say very much much about this because I haven't, couldn't, read the whole thing. I'll probably come back to it, God willing. But Eliot himself said of these lectures as to why he didn't want to publish them, that they were "immature and pretentious". This, coming from me, would have sounded quite presumptuous, but from him it's rather admirable, and anyway, it's true. They are both pretentious and immature. As to the question of maturity, many of the same ideas and preoccupations would develop later. But the man who wrote the Four Quartets is still well off in the future and this is because his tangling with metaphysics up to this point had been collegiate: in courses and books. The great poems of the later years derive from the patient endurance of life as it actually is and himself as he actually was. Here in his thirties, he is a brilliant young fellow, aglow with the renown of his early successes: Prufrock and the Waste Land primarily. I only read the first four lectures - there are nine altogether; but the only message I could really discern was: I am a very clever, well-read poet with a hint of religious solemnity.
Anyway, let them, the lectures, serve as a reflection to everyone who is or was exceedingly clever that they may blush and take heart remembering that this was the man who later wrote The Four Quartets.