Abstract

Rafey Habib's book offers a comprehensive study of Eliot's philosophical writings and attempts to assess their impact on both his early poetry through 'The Waste Land' and the central concepts of his literary criticsm. Habib presents the first scholalrly analysis of Eliot's difficult unpublished papers on Kant and Bergson and establishes the nature of Eliot's connections with major figures in the Western philosophical tradition, including Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bradley and Russell. The Early T. S. Eliot and Western Philosophy attempts to unravel the complex notions of irony underlying Eliot's poetry, arguing that these originate in his philosophical thinking and achieve persistent expression in his early aesthetics. This book offers close readings of Eliot's major poems and critical essays, shedding valuable light on his views on language, tradition, impersonality and emotion, and situating these in a broad aesthetic and philosophical context.