T.S. Eliot was arguably the most important poet of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, there remains much scope for reconsidering the content, form and expressive nature of Eliot’s religious poetry, and this edited collection pays particular attention to the multivalent spiritual dimensions of his popular poems, such as ‘The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock’, ‘The Waste Land’, ‘Journey of the Magi’, ‘The Hollow Men’, and ‘Choruses’ from The Rock. Eliot’s sustained popularity is an intriguing cultural phenomenon, given that the religious voice of Eliot’s poetry is frequently antagonistic towards the ‘unchurched’ or secular reader: ‘You! Hypocrite lecteur!’ This said, Eliot’s spiritual development was not a logical matter and his devotional poetry is rarely didactic. The volume presents a rich and powerful range of essays by leading and emerging T.S. Eliot and literary modernist scholars, considering the doctrinal, religious, humanist, mythic and secular aspects of Eliot’s poetry: Anglo-Catholic belief (Barry Spurr), the integration of doctrine and poetry (Tony Sharpe), the modernist mythopoeia of Four Quartets (Michael Bell), the ‘felt significance’ of religious poetry (Andy Mousley), ennui as a modern evil (Scott Freer), Eliot’s pre-conversion encounter with ‘modernist theology’ (Joanna Rzepa), Eliot’s ‘religious agrarianism’ (Jeremy Diaper), the maternal allegory of Ash Wednesday (Matthew Geary), and an autobiographical reading of religious conversion inspired by Eliot in a secular age (Lynda Kong). This book is a timely addition to the ‘return of religion’ in modernist studies in the light of renewed interest in T.S. Eliot scholarship.

T. S. Eliot was arguably the most important poet of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, there remains much scope for reconsidering the content, form and expressive nature of Eliot's religious poetry, and this edited collection pays particular attention to the multivalent spiritual dimensions of his popular poems, such as 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock', 'The Waste Land', 'Journey of the Magi', 'The Hollow Men', and 'Choruses' from The Rock. Eliot's sustained popularity is an intriguing cultural phenomenon, given that the religious voice of Eliot's poetry is frequently antagonistic towards the 'unchurched' or secular reader: "You! Hypocrite lecteur!" This said, Eliot's spiritual development was not a logical matter and his devotional poetry is rarely didactic. The volume presents a rich and powerful range of essays by leading and emerging T. S. Eliot and literary modernist scholars, considering the doctrinal, religious, humanist, mythic and secular aspects of Eliot's poetry: Anglo-Catholic belief (Barry Spurr), the integration of doctrine and poetry (Anthony Sharpe), the modernist mythopoeia of Four Quartets (Michael Bell), the 'felt significance' of religious poetry (Andy Mousley), ennui as a modern evil (Scott Freer), Eliot's pre-conversion encounter with 'modernist theology' (Joanna Rzepa), Eliot's 'religious agrarianism' (Jeremy Diaper), the maternal allegory of 'Ash Wednesday' (Matthew Geary), and an auto-biographical reading of religious conversion inspired by Eliot in a secular age (Lynda Kong). This book is a timely addition to the 'return of religion' in modernist studies in the light of renewed interest in T. S. Eliot scholarship.

This is the first book-length study to examine the interface between literary and theological modernisms. It provides a comprehensive account of literary responses to the modernist crisis in Christian theology from a transnational and interdenominational perspective. It offers a cultural history of the period, considering a wide range of literary and historical sources, including novels, drama, poetry, literary criticism, encyclicals, theological and philosophical treatises, periodical publications, and wartime propaganda. By contextualising literary modernism within the cultural, religious, and political landscape, the book reveals fundamental yet largely forgotten connections between literary and theological modernisms. It shows that early-twentieth-century authors, poets, and critics, including Rainer Maria Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Czesław Miłosz, actively engaged with the debates between modernist and neo-scholastic theologians raging across Europe. These debates contributed to developing new ways of thinking about the relationship between religion and literature, and informed contemporary critical writings on aesthetics and poetics.

Landmark of anthropological and mythological scholarship explores the connection between the legend of the Grail and ancient mystery cults. A major source for T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual features the year’s best scholarship on this major literary figure.

A History of Modernist Poetry examines innovative anglophone poetries from decadence to the post-war period. The first of its three parts considers formal and contextual issues, including myth, politics, gender, and race, while the second and third parts discuss a wide range of individual poets, including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Mina Loy, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore, as well as key movements such as Imagism, Objectivism, and the Harlem Renaissance. This book also addresses the impact of both World Wars on experimental poetries and the crucial role of magazines in disseminating and proselytizing on behalf of poetic modernism. The collection concludes with a wide-ranging discussion of the inheritance of modernism in recent writing on both sides of the Atlantic.

Modernist Mythopoeia argues that the experimental modernist form of mythopoeia was directed towards expressing a range of metaphysical perspectives that fall between material secularism and dogmatic religion. The book is a timely addition to the 'post-secular' debate as well as to the 'return of religion' in modernist studies.

The last major verse written by Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot, considered by Eliot himself to be his finest work Four Quartets is a rich composition that expands the spiritual vision introduced in “The Waste Land.” Here, in four linked poems (“Burnt Norton,” “East Coker,” “The Dry Salvages,” and “Little Gidding”), spiritual, philosophical, and personal themes emerge through symbolic allusions and literary and religious references from both Eastern and Western thought. It is the culminating achievement by a man considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century and one of the seminal figures in the evolution of modernism.

"Barry Spurr's eagerly-awaited, definitive study of T.S. Eliot's Anglo-Catholic belief and practice shows how the poet is religion shaped his life and work for almost forty years, until his death in 1965. The author examines Eliot's formal adoption of Anglo-Catholicism, in 1927, as the culmination of his intellectual, cultural, artistic, spiritual and personal development to that point. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the unique influence that Anglo-Catholicismis doctrinal and devotional principles, and its social teaching, had on Eliot's poetry, plays, prose and personal life. An informed presentation and discussion of Anglo-Catholicism at the time of Eliot's conversion and through the subsequent decades of his Christian faith and practice. Significant new material from correspondence and diaries which sheds light on Eliot's thought, poetry and prose. This book is essential reading for all scholars and readers of T.S. Eliot and his circle; for students and devotees ofAnglo-Catholicism, and scholars of the interaction between literature and theology, especially in the twentieth century. It will also be of use to senior and Honours-level undergraduates and postgraduate research students working in the fields of Modernism and its principles and belief systems, and for students of religion, especially Western Christianity and Anglicanism."

This is a critical handbook on T. S. Eliot’s poetical works and verse dramas with their text and critical interpretation for students of Asian and African countries. An exhaustive discussion is made through critical analysis of Eliot’s literary personality as a poet and theorist. Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English poetry, and in a series of critical essays, he shattered old orthodoxies and erected new ones. The publication of Four Quartets led to his recognition as the greatest living English poet and man of letters, and in 1948 he was awarded both the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Eliot was to pursue four careers: editor, dramatist, literary critic, and philosophical poet. He was probably the most erudite poet of his time in the English language. His undergraduate poems were “literary” and conventional. His first important publication, and the first masterpiece of Modernism in English, was “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. The poem “The Waste Land” is known for its obscure nature—its slippage between satire and prophecy; its abrupt changes of speaker, location, and time. Eliot’s concern with faith and doubt, chaos and calamity and decline in the sensibility of the modern people is reflected through his poems and plays. Modernity and the sense for the modernist make him unparalleled and the most popular modern poet. His great musical sense in his poetry reminds of his use of rhymes, metre and rhythm. This rimming of poetry with music brings meaningful beauty and concept.