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T. S. Eliot |
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Given the density and complexity of Eliot's poetry, the great body of his own critical writings, and the vast extent of his influence and importance, it is not surprising that an enormous amount of criticism has collected about his work. From the beginning of his career, he was a controversial figure, denounced as an upstart by those reflexively resistant to anything new and different. Perhaps inevitably, some suggested that his poetry, especially The Waste Land, constituted a hoax. As his influence grew to astonishing proportions, there were those who attempted revisionist deflations, most notably R. H. Robbins in The T. S. Eliot Myth (1951).
But for the most part Eliot was extraordinarily successful in having his work judged on his own terms. Following his lead, commentators in the first several decades of attention to his work pursued a FORMALIST approach, analyzing the symbols and structures of his texts in order to decode their intended meanings. Given his themes and techniques, a MYTHOLOGICAL analysis was also favored, both in terms of his frequent classical references and of the Christian foundation of much of his poetry. Since Eliot so often drew upon other works in his poems, source criticism has always been a staple of the analysis of his writings.
As his closely guarded privacy gave way before researchers' inquiries in the years following his death, a BIOGRAPHICAL approach, often combined with the PSYCHOLOGICAL, began to be taken, at times with illuminating results, at times with lamentable ones. The less attractive features of his personality and thought have also been the subject of some scrutiny in recent years, sometimes discussed in a tone of shocked surprise, as if these aspects of Eliot had been carefully buried secrets only now being unearthed by the commentator. A notable instance of this tendency is Cynthia Ozick's "T. S. Eliot at 101" (The New Yorker, November 20, 1989).
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