A Life Composed: T.S. Eliot and the Morals of ModernismLIT Verlag Münster, 2002 - 352 pages "The modern literary critic", T. S. Eliot wrote in 1929, "must be an 'experimenter' outside of what you might at first consider his own province; [...] there is no literary problem which does not lead us irresistibly to larger problems." This book follows Eliot's principle and situates his literary and critical work in a wide context that reveals manifold links between aesthetics, ethics, politics and epistemology: the historical context of early-twentieth-century idealism, vitalism and pragmatism, especially the intensely political Bergsonian controversy, and the modern context of the philosophies of Charles Taylor, Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty. 'Knowledge', it argues, was verbalised in the modernist age, individualised into the act of 'knowing', an act with motives and goals, and thus introduced into the realm of ethics - a process central to twentieth-century thought. Eliot's poems especially, constructed as "a life composed", a literary lifetime linking composition and composure, ponder the virtue of precision, the sins of pride and "mental sloth", the temptation of prejudice and the need for conviction. Decidedly tentative, Eliot's poems solve the problem of morally significant literature. In a century of suspicion, they ask the crucial question of where one should start to rely. |
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Action française aesthetics articulacy articulation Athenaeum Babbitt Benda Bergson Bergsonian chapter Charles Maurras classicism classicist Commentary concept conscious Criterion critical critique crucial culture debate Descartes Eliot wrote Eliot's thought Eliot's view emotions epistemological Essays ethical experience F. H. Bradley Faber and Faber fact feeling formulation Foucault Four Quartets Hulme human ibid ideal identity individual intellectual interpretation intuition irony Irving Babbitt judgment Julien Benda knowledge l'Intelligence language linked literary Literature living London Maritain Maurras Maurras's meaning metaphysical Michel Foucault modern modernist modernist age moral narrative Nietzsche œuvre Paris Paul Valéry philo philosophy poem poet poetical poetry political postmodern pragmatism pragmatist present problem psychology question quoted reality relation to oneself religion romantic romanticism Rorty Rorty's scepticism Scheler self-interpretation sense social strong evaluation style T. E. Hulme T. S. Eliot Taylor theory tradition Transl truth values words writings