Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
- Poems (1919); Ara Vos Prec (1920); Poems (1920)
- The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920, 1921)
- The Waste Land (1922)
- Homage to John Dryden (1924)
- Poems 1909–1925 (1925)
- For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (1928, 1929)
- Dante (1929); Animula (1929); Marina (1930)
- Ash-Wednesday (1930)
- Selected Essays 1917–1932 (1932)
- Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
- After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934)
- The Rock (1934)
- Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
- Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936)
- The Family Reunion (1939)
- The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
- East Coker (1940); Burnt Norton (1941); The Dry Salvages (1941); Little Gidding (1942); Four Quartets (1943)
- Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948, 1949)
- The Cocktail Party (1949, 1950)
- The Confidential Clerk (1954)
- The Elder Statesman (1959)
- Index
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
- Poems (1919); Ara Vos Prec (1920); Poems (1920)
- The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920, 1921)
- The Waste Land (1922)
- Homage to John Dryden (1924)
- Poems 1909–1925 (1925)
- For Lancelot Andrewes: Essays on Style and Order (1928, 1929)
- Dante (1929); Animula (1929); Marina (1930)
- Ash-Wednesday (1930)
- Selected Essays 1917–1932 (1932)
- Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
- After Strange Gods: A Primer of Modern Heresy (1934)
- The Rock (1934)
- Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
- Collected Poems 1909–1935 (1936)
- The Family Reunion (1939)
- The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
- East Coker (1940); Burnt Norton (1941); The Dry Salvages (1941); Little Gidding (1942); Four Quartets (1943)
- Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948, 1949)
- The Cocktail Party (1949, 1950)
- The Confidential Clerk (1954)
- The Elder Statesman (1959)
- Index
Summary
*Edwin Muir.
"The Use of Poetry."
Spectator 151, no. 5499
(17 November 1933),
703.
This volume contains eight lectures given by Mr. Eliot at Harvard University during the term of his professorship. Their purpose is roughly defined by the title, and more particularly by a sentence in the introductory lecture. “Let me start,” Mr. Eliot says, “with the supposition that we do not know what poetry is, or what it does or ought to do, or of what use it is; and try to find out, in examining the relation of poetry and criticism, what the use of both of them is.” The examination is careful and penetrating, but the result of it is not something that can be shortly formulated in a review; it is rather a body of conviction which grows as the author deals with one period of poetry after another. He does not arrive finally at any hard and fast definition of the use of poetry and criticism, nor does he seem to have much faith in the use of such a definition. His way of giving us a lively impression of the use of these two activities is to show us what it is not; and though that may appear at first purely negative method, it is hard to imagine a more suitable one for dealing with a problem which cannot be satisfactorily solved by a generalization. But if Mr. Eliot does not tell us what the use of poetry and criticism is, he tells us a great many things about it, and that, for the student of poetry and criticism, is probably a far more useful thing.
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- Information
- T. S. EliotThe Contemporary Reviews, pp. 235 - 270Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004