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The famed series of Trinity College and Johns Hopkins lectures in which the Nobel Prize winner explored history, poetry, and philosophy.
While a student at Harvard in the early years of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot immersed himself in the verse of Dante, Donne, and the nineteenth-century French poet Jules Laforgue. His study of the relation of thought and feeling in these poets led Eliot, as a poet and critic living in London, to formulate an original theory of the poetry generally termed “metaphysical”—philosophical and intellectual poetry that revels in startlingly unconventional imagery.
Eliot came to perceive a gradual “disintegration of the intellect” following three “metaphysical moments” of European civilization—the thirteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries. The theory is at once a provocative prism through which to view Western intellectual and literary history and an exceptional insight into Eliot’s own intellectual development.
This annotated edition includes the eight Clark Lectures on metaphysical poetry that Eliot delivered at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1926, and their revision and extension for his three Turnbull Lectures at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1933. They reveal in great depth the historical currents of poetry and philosophy that shaped Eliot’s own metaphysical moment in the twentieth century.
Our Top Reviews
Reviewer: Russael
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: So valuable in my study of poetry
Review: This is one of my most cherished books. I’ve read it three times. I’m still not really sure I could tell you why a poem is metaphysical or not. I will have to read it a few more times. Eliot is such good company. His learning and his passion are astonishing. You don’t like Eliot. You’ve been taught to dislike Eliot. But this book is fascinating, and you learn so much about poetry and even about the conservative mindset. And you get exposed to a lot of great poetry from a man who understood it from the inside out, at least from his perspective. You can get this on kindle now, although I have a hardcopy. Actually, I don’t read this book, I chew it. A few more dozen times, maybe I’ll know what a metaphysical poem is. BTW, Dante is the greatest poet who ever lived, sez Eliot. I remember so long ago reading that Pound was astonished that General Vinegar Joe Stilwell never mentioned Dante in this diary. I was a soldier at the time. It seemed the oddest thing in the world. Why should a soldier have any interest in reading poetry? This guy Dante must be really something. Eliot and Pound both think so. Another star in the metaphysical firmament is Donne. Another exemplar Richard Crashaw. Read. Enjoy. Learn.
Reviewer: E. Slyman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Five Stars
Review: Thanks
Price effective as of Apr 07, 2025 03:36:03 UTC
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