Just so you don't think the cheese has been lazy, Or: the longest post to ever appear on this blog... Part 2

Here is the second "fruit" of the cheese' work for this past semester. Good ol' Eliot, falls into both American and British Modernism. As an aside, the cheese won't post the 40 or so pages of his second novel that he produced for his workshop because that shit needs to be protected....

The Cheese

Dr. O’Brien

English 536

December 12, 2006

Critical Theory Synthesis and Evolution: Eliot’s Literary Journey from The Waste Land to Little Gidding

A cursory reading of The Waste Land and Four Quartets might lead one to conclude that T.S. Eliot’s literary and philosophical vision had changed much in the roughly 20 years between the publication of each poem. This would not be a completely unfounded conclusion in light of the many things that occurred in Eliot’s life during this time; his conversion to Anglicanism and the committal of Vivien Eliot being the most important (North 295). Likewise, the simple fact that 20 years had passed would likely lead to any number of changes in a normal person’s outlook on art and life. It is not the intention of this paper to claim that Eliot’s views on poetry and philosophy underwent no change during this period. Rather, Eliot’s evolution as a critic and poet was spurred in large part by the fact that the new beliefs he gained during this period of his life were in many ways similar to his original disposition toward artistic thought and execution. It was, therefore, an easy task for Eliot to synthesize these new insights into his views on, and practical application of, his art. Viewed from an historical standpoint, in fact, much of Eliot’s career as a poet, beginning with the immediate yearning in The Waste Land can be seen as a march toward this ultimate unification of personal and artistic ideals he produces within the lines of Little Gidding. Not coincidently, Eliot’s response to being asked if he thought Four Quartets represented his best work was, “Yes, and I’d like to feel that they get better as they go on. The second is better than the first, the third is better than the second, and the fourth is the best of all. At any rate, that’s the way I flatter myself” (Hall 64). It is interesting, also, to note that once the complete version of Four Quartets was published in 1943, Eliot produced no other significant work of poetry. He lived a further 22 years, publishing a number of critical essays and seeing several of his plays performed, but it appears that, as a poet, Eliot could produce nothing to equal the lines of Little Gidding.

Realizing this objective was not an easy one for Eliot. It was a journey that began in earnest in The Waste Land. Numerous literary critics have spent a good deal of time extracting meaning from this work, and doubtless, many more will in the years to come. It is a work dizzying in its complexity. While this presents a veritable goldmine of new critical interpretations, it is also cause for consternation when attempting to place The Waste Land within a context of related material. Additionally, The Waste Land was not Eliot’s first published poem. It does, however, mark an important turning point in Eliot’s career. By the time The Waste Land is finished, Eliot has already published two of his most influential critical pieces, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet.” While the breadth of Eliot’s literary criticism is quite large, these essays present a theoretical foundation for the entire scope of Eliot’s poetic career.

The most important and recognizable idea in the “Hamlet” essay comes from Eliot’s argument on how an artist should convey emotion within a work of art:

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked (Selected Essays 124-5).

Without delving into the complexities of Eliot’s years of literary criticism, one can take from the idea of the “objective correlative” the most basic foundation of Eliot’s view on how artists should manufacture their work. To Eliot, sensory experience is the only tool a reader has at his disposal to use in gleaning any meaningful insight from a poem (or any work of art). The importance of the objective correlative in relation to art, then, is that sensory experience is the only thing all people share in common, and must therefore be the common ground on which all artists create their work. Because of this, using any literary device other something grounded in reality, such as an actual object or situation, does not adequately express emotion to the audience. Eliot’s critique of Hamlet the play, in fact, is that the emotional state of Hamlet the man is not adequately supported by “...facts as they appear” (ibid). Just as “Hamlet” contains a single idea underlying its entire argument, so too does the essay “Tradition and Individual Talent” include a unique idea at the heart of its message. “No poet…has his complete meaning alone. His significance…is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists” (Eliot, Selected Essays 4). It is important, then, that an artist know the history of art and how he fits into this history, “The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them…and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new” (Selected Essays 5). In turning one’s attention to Eliot’s early masterpiece, The Waste Land, it becomes quickly apparent that both of these ideas were foremost in his mind while writing the poem.

In the opening lines of The Waste Land the reader is instantly assaulted with images that produce an emotional response, “April is the cruelest, month breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain. / Winter kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers” (1-7). Just seven lines and yet a number of specific images, “dead land,” “dull roots,” “forgetful snow,” and “dried tubers,” are in place to project the idea of a cold and unrelenting earth. From the very outset, then, the reader is well aware that this world Eliot is creating is indeed a waste land. These images have even more power, though, as they are of particular contrast against the use of “April” and “spring rain” in the same lines. Right from the start the reader is aware that this will not be a work of happiness and contentment. Going deeper, though, the reader finds that, not coincidently, the opening lines also call to mind the opening of a seminal work in English literature, The Canterbury Tales, “When the sweet showers of April have pierced / The drought of March, and pierced it to the root, / And every vein is bathed in that moisture / Whose quickening force will engender the flower;”(Chaucer 1). And there are multiple connections present in the opening lines of Eliot’s poem to the opening of Chaucer’s; April and April, dried roots and root, showers and moisture, Lilacs and flower. The title of the poem suggests to the reader that Eliot is presenting a stagnant vision of the world. The allusion to The Canterbury Tales, however, sets to mind the idea of a pilgrimage. And this, in fact, is exactly what Eliot will lead his reader on as the poem unfolds, but this pilgrimage will not offer any spiritual enlightenment once it is completed. From the very beginning of the work, then, Eliot has sought to uphold the principles of both the objective correlative and his own relation to, and connection with, the artists of the past.

The entirety of The Waste Land, in fact, is suffused with such images as “objects.” A detailed account, therefore, would require many more pages, but it is pertinent to this discussion to focus on a select few that are important in relation to Eliot’s underlying philosophical perspective.

Moving forward to line 60, the reader comes to a description of London:

Unreal City,

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. (60-68)

The density of images in this passage is impressive, but this density is important to the power of the text. The term “Unreal City” seems, at first, not solely in line with the “objective correlative” ideal, as it is a description that may not lead to an immediate image is the readers mind. That is unless the reader were familiar with London during Eliot’s time, as the term “The City” is “...the name for the financial district in London” (Rainey 81). To the knowledgeable reader, or the one who does his homework (the only two kinds that should really attempt reading Eliot), this is a clear-cut image evoking a specific emotional response. Immediately after follows the “brown fog of a winter dawn.” To most, fog is not generally thought of as brown. But this is London that Eliot has conjured, and here the fog is suffused with the dirt and soot abundant in the city.

Eliot then turns to the “flowing” crowd (repeated in line 66), with its “sighs, short and infrequent.” No individual is recognizable as every member of the crowd could be responsible for the sighs emitted. There are also the dual references to death; “I had not thought death had undone so many” and “With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.” The crowd is not a joyous, lively bunch. They are the walking dead, trapped in their lives of undeath, at the beck and call of the bell that begins the workday. The image, again, only imparts half of the depth of the passage though, as the line “I had not though death had undone so many” comes directly from Dante. In Canto III of The Inferno, as the poet first steps beyond the gates of hell Dante is struck by the image of “...so long a file of people / that I could not believe / death had undone so many” (Alighieri 45). Once again Eliot has connected to a poet of the past, but here the image takes on an evolved meaning. These are not souls who have passed from the earthly realm, as Dante saw, but rather these are living beings who are now lifeless. Just as those in Canto III, though, they pass through their lives “without disgrace yet without praise” (ibid) This is an interesting foreshadow of Eliot’s work in Little Gidding, since at this point Eliot has not converted to Anglicanism, but he can still make the religious connection between those in Canto III (those “lukewarm” referred to in Rev. 3:16) and the faceless workers in London.

Further on Eliot comes back to passages of death:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience (322-330)

People have now evolved from parts of a faceless flowing crowd into persons with a specific feature; “sweaty faces.” And their environment has taken on more details; “frosty silence in the gardens,” “agony in stony places.” The “gardens” image is particularly telling. The default image, for most people, of a garden is something lush, vibrant, and full of life. But this garden is full of “frosty silence.” Coupled with the “thunder of spring,” this passage connects back to the opening of the work. There is no solace to be taken from the earth. It is not a life giving entity, but one that brings pain and “shouting and crying.” And just like those who are already dead in the “Unreal City,” “He who is living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience.” At the end of the poem, though, Eliot comes back to the “Unreal City,” proclaiming “London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down” (426).

As Rainey observes, though, this passage is also reminiscent of “...the betrayal and arrest of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane...” (116). It is important, especially in light of Eliot’s later work, to note that among so much talk of death and an unyielding earth, the striking amount of mystical and religious references within The Waste Land. In fact, the entire work begins with just such a reference as section one is titled “The Burial of the Dead.” This is the same title to the burial service in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. When dealing with a death, or specifically a burial, people often turn to religious texts and ceremonies for comfort and support. The Waste Land was written well before Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism, but the connection cannot be overlooked. The opening lines present a bleak description, but read in reference to the section title there seems to be some idea of comfort within. Eliot may not be at a point in his life when he knows what this comfort is, but he seems to have a sense it is there.

As evidence of this, at line 43 Eliot calls upon the name of “Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,” and the following lines go about describing a reading from a deck of tarot cards. The treatment is such that it seems Eliot is dismissing the mystical art as a sham. The pronouncement “I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring” (56) seem generalized to the point of absurdity. But, its inclusion is important in relation to the other mystical images evoked, for it seems that Eliot really is searching for the answer to the problems with humanity enumerated in the poem. Continuing in this vain comes the title to the third section of the work, “The Fire Sermon.” This title is taken from a sermon from the Buddha, in which he preached against the things of this world. In a way, with its continual images of death, decay, and ruin, The Waste Land can also be read in this way. Section three even ends with an appeal to God, “To Carthage then I came / Burning burning burning burning / O Lord Thou pluckest me out / O Lord Thou pluckest / burning” (307-11). The entire poem, in fact, ends on a similar note. Seemingly at a loss for what to do with all he has written, the poet is left to declare, “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” (430). He has taken all he sees of the world, the horribly bad and the small amount of hope, and created his art. Unfortunately, he has merely grasped at the solutions, and can do nothing further.

In moving from The Waste Land to Four Quartets there is often the impulse to:

find in Four Quartets a sign of some evasion or dishonesty in the poet who wrote The Waste Land. The very elegance of the later poem…seems a withdrawal from human suffering, a retreat into mystical contemplation far from ‘the world where poetry is accustomed to dwell’…Eliot, after all, helped teach modern readers to value tension and discord in poetry, and…Four Quartets seems strangely lacking in those very qualities (De Lamotte 342).

As we have seen, though, Eliot was very cognizant of a mystical or religious dilemma while writing The Waste Land. As Childs notes, “Eliot’s interest in mysticism at the time of Four Quartets is continuous in an important respect with his philosophical interests of thirty years before” (145). The difference between the two works, though, stems from the new approach to these dilemmas that Eliot now had at his command. It is only natural, therefore, for the poet to handle these issues in a different way. Specifically, Little Gidding “is a deliberately retrospective summary of Eliot’s poetic career, and evaluation of the influences that have shaped his poetic voice” (Emig 84).

Much like references to religious texts and ideals in the section titles of The Waste Land, the title Little Gidding refers to:

the dedication to religious life evinced by the small community of Little Gidding. Its leader Nicholas Ferrar…was ordained deacon in the Church. However, he refused to proceed to higher orders and returned instead…to Little Gidding, to devote himself to the simple and austere Christian life of prayer and good works (Reibetanz 139).

With this in mind, one necessarily connects the opening of The Waste Land, with its allusions to The Canterbury Tales and a holy pilgrimage to this image of a religious community. Here, then, we have Eliot embarking on a similar journey as the one he took with The Waste Land but the path will be markedly different. Even the images present in the opening lines are reminiscent of those in The Waste Land, “Midwinter spring is its own season / Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown, / Suspended in time, between pole and tropic” (1-3). The reference “midwinter spring” hearkens back to the phrase “April is the cruelest month.” Both are simultaneously calling upon distinct and opposite ideas. The difference, of course, is in what is being represented. The Waste Land opens with a jarring and non-instinctive description of spring and earth. So too does Little Gidding begin with a non-instinctive description of a season. A “midwinter spring” which is “sempiternal”; a season that is ever lasting and “suspended it time.” Here, though, Eliot is setting a new course for his exploration while still heeding to what has come before. In order to complete this journey, the poet must revive the images and questions of his past so that he might finally deal with them in the present.

As Emig demonstrates “It sets the tone for the paradoxical and yet complementary imagery of the section…It also already implies the notion of timelessness so crucial to the whole of Four Quartets…individual anxiety…is extended into the impersonal image of ‘soul’s sap quivers’” (85). It is an important distinction to make that while timelessness was dealt with in terms of the finality of death in The Waste Land, here it is timelessness in terms of the eternal soul. Likewise, the “individual anxiety” that destroyed individuality in The Waste Land, is now evolved past mere human terms into the realm of the soul. While these issues have transcended the physical realm of humanity it is important to remember that Eliot is able “to preserve an attitude of intense serenity while not minimizing the intensity of the struggle” (Thompson 141). Gone are the disjointed humanistic attempts to rectify the problems. The poet has gone into the completely mystical realm without losing the vitality (or, one might say, the humanity) of the struggle. Throughout this section Eliot is continually connecting the physical world with the metaphysical, but always by relating the former to the latter “Here, the intersection of the timeless moment / Is England and nowhere. Never and always” (54-55).

Section II, in particular, is important for how the poet systematically disassembles the “classical” foundation of physical reality:

The death of hope and despair,

This is the death of air…

Laughs without mirth.

This is the death of earth…

The marred foundations we forgot,

Of sanctuary and choir.

This is the death of water and fire. (61-2, 70-1, 77-9)

Unlike in The Waste Land where the earth is dying, and man must die with it. Here, the world will unquestionably die, but man is not necessarily destined to that fate, “From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit / Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire” (136-7). This is one of the most important developments from The Waste Land. Where a number of disjointed attempts were made to connect with the mystical, now the “spirit” can be “restored.”

Section III begins with the poet making the assertion that:

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life (142-6).

A passage with seemingly little in common with Eliot’s earlier work, but as Reibetanz points out, “Eliot does not let his readers rest in well-worn and accepted attitudes…he forces the reader to square his values repeatedly; just as we are settling into one attitude, the image is shifted slightly, and we respond with a readjustment of our point of view” (166). Eliot then, has moved beyond the structural displacement that tested the reader in The Waste Land. Here he has created that same challenging relationship with the reader through intellectual ideas. Let it not be thought, however, that he has abandoned the objective correlative. Even in this small section, while discussing such ideas as “attachment,” “detachment” and “indifference,” he constructs for the reader the sensory experience of the hedgerow, so that even while contemplating the nature of these ideas they form in the reader’s mind a distinct image and therefore evoke a distinct response.

Eliot continues on in section IV in his habit of juxtaposing and connecting alternating and seemingly contrary imagery, “The only hope, or else despair / Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre– / To be redeemed from fire by fire” (198-200). The images are elementary, but their placement is important. The difference between “pyre or pyre” and “from fire to fire” are obvious in reference to the fires of sin and hell, and the redeeming fires of heaven. These are not images created by Eliot, but his use in this way is instructive. He is not espousing an easily taken remedy to the problem of sin and death, as the answer is equally painful. This is not an especially comforting image of redemption, but it is the only one available. He continues on in an even less consoling mode, “Who then devised the torment? Love…Behind the hands that wove the intolerable shirt of flame…We only live, only suspire / Consumed by either fire or fire” (201-7). The pain of life, and the pain of the only possible redemption come from nothing other than love. It is a harsh prospect for humanity, but the only possible remedy.

In terms of literary allusions, Little Gidding seems to fall short of the bar Eliot set for himself within The Waste Land. There are a few present, to be sure. The “compound ghost” the speaker meets at line 97, Eliot himself declared was principally made up (in his mind) of Yeats and Swift. Line 179 talks of the “one who died blind and quiet,” an obvious reference to Milton. But where The Waste Land borrowed some of its major images from literary works, in Little Gidding Eliot seems to have replaced much of this with images drawn from his own experiences living in London during World War 2. It is well known that Eliot was an air raid warden during the war, and lines 80-151 present the speaker as patrolling the streets after a raid. There are also several instances within the poem when Eliot uses the image of the dove. On one level this, obviously, represents the numerous instances in the bible where the Holy Spirit is described as a dove descending from heaven (most notably John 1:32). But some of these references, such as in line 83, “...the dark dove with the flickering tongue” take on new meaning in light of Eliot’s life. Clearly in this instance, just before he heads out on patrol, the speaker is talking about the German bombers that have just “passed below the horizon.” The beginning of section IV is another instance of this, though with more ambiguity, “The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror / Of which the tongues declare / The one discharge from sin and error” (202-205). This is no simple image, as the dove simultaneously “breaks the air” and yet “tongues declare...discharge from sin and error.” This image has become both dive bomber and Holy Spirit, bringing both destruction and salvation. It seems a nearly impossible image to adequately conceive in one’s mind. Eliot continues in his use of contrasting imagery that we saw even as far back as the opening of The Waste Land, but instead of giving the reader a simple set of contrasting images Eliot has now constructed one that is, if not a complete contradiction, at least nearly impossible for the human mind to completely rectify. Eliot will employ this technique again to even greater effect at the close of the work.

One point to consider, however, is how Little Gidding (and all of Four Quartets) actually reads much more like a traditional poem than The Waste Land. On the one hand, the tone and composition of the earlier work were so radically different from much of what had come before. The numerous references to literature throughout the work, though, allowed Eliot to bridge the gap between old and new and thus could The Waste Land take its rightful place among the masterpieces that had come before. As Eliot grows older, though, and his philosophical ideology becomes more solidified he finds less need to work in “updated” modes of meter and form. Much of Four Quartets, in fact, has distinct meter patterns, and even rhyme schemes. This hearkening back to the form and structure of old is essential to the strength of the work. Here, Eliot has gone from fragmentation to “A poem with a re-established symbolic coherence created out of discursive fragments” (Emig 82), and the symbolic coherence is reflected in the structural coherence. The underlying symbology of each work, though, is still connected as both poems are referencing different facets of the same central themes even as Eliot’s philosophy has evolved. All of this, therefore, makes Four Quartets both a more “traditional” work in relation to the “dead poets,” but at the same time a unique and newly expressive work in Eliot’s personal cannon.

Section V is the beginning of the end of Four Quartets, and not surprisingly Eliot calls even this idea into question, “What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning. / The end is where we start from” (208-210). As the beginning of Little Gidding recalled the beginning of The Waste Land, so too does the end of this poem recall the end of the other. The final coherent thought in The Waste Land, “These fragments I have shored against my ruins” is particularly poignant in light of the opening of section V, “The end is where we start from.” The beginning of the journey taken through Four Quartets, then, began at the end of The Waste Land. And there is no other place Eliot could have started, in fact. The previous poem was full of questions, while only revealing some glimpses of a few possible answers. The only thing ultimately definite about the previous poem is the questions. Naturally, this is where Eliot had to begin when constructing Four Quartets. This passage, though, is also looking forward, “for the exploration is not to end here with the poem but to move onwards beyond it” (Reibetanz 176). The final stanza, in fact, urges the reader to such action, “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time” (233-6).

Moving even further, though, Eliot now confronts the ultimate problems he finds with the physical world, time and death.

We die with the dying:

See, they depart, and we go with them.

We are born with the dead:

See, they return, and bring us with them.

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree

Are of equal duration. A people without history

Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern

Of timeless moments…(222-9).

Having equated beginning and end at the start of the section, here Eliot takes on the exact nature of time. The “moment” of the rose and the yew-tree “are of equal duration.” The poet has transcended the earthly concept of time, as it does not matter in the eternal realm of the spirit where “history is a pattern of timeless moments.” Moments do not happen and subsequently become lost to history, but rather all of history exists as moments for all eternity. This distinction of time is important in relation to the preceding discussion of death. “We die with the dying” and “we are born with the dead.” All of humanity, because of the timeless nature of moments, is constantly dying and being reborn. Death is no longer the pervading corruptive force of The Waste Land, but rather a part of human nature that should not necessarily be feared.

The poem ends with, perhaps, the most difficult image in Eliot’s cannon:

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one (249-253).

On the face of it, the image seems fairly straightforward, but as Reibatanz points out:

…any representation of the fire and the rose as one must of necessity suggest either the fire engulfing the rose, or the rose transforming the fire. To our human comprehension, the balance must go one way or the other, for we cannot apprehend the razor’s edge of equilibrium that is present in the union of two distinct and contrasting entities into one (186).

But this is exactly what Eliot is doing and has done throughout this poem and his career. This unification, when “all shall be well and / all manner of thing shall be well” is nothing less than “the ultimate unification of all experience and all reality” (ibid).

For Eliot, the journey from The Waste Land to Little Gidding was anything but a straight and easy path. It was a 20-year odyssey that encompassed numerous episodes of pain and thought in the life of the poet. Nevertheless, it is an interesting study to see that while much changed for Eliot, in an outwardly way, the difficulties he dealt with in his art were continuous. Having posed many questions in the early portion of his work, Eliot systematically took on the task of seeking answers to those very questions he himself asked. It was a long process of discovery, in fact, to find those answers. Eliot, however, would not be satisfied to simply present them as mere discourse on the nature of humanity. His primary labor was, indeed, to craft those answers into art. This, perhaps, was the only option open to Eliot. The image of “And the fire and the rose are one” being so strongly in opposition to human experience and understanding that where else but in the poem could Eliot deliver it?

Works Cited

Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Trans. Robert & Jean Hollander. New York: DoubleDay, 2000.

Childs, Donald J. From Philosophy to Poetry: T.S. Eliot’s Study of Knowledge and Experience. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. David Wright. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

De Lamotte, Eugenia. “Dissonance and Resolution in Four Quartets.” Modern Language Quarterly 49.4 (1988): 342-362.

Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems and Plays: 1909-1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1971.

---. Selected Essays. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950.

---. The Waste Land: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism. Ed. Michael North. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

Emig, Rainer. Modernism in Poetry: Motivations, Structures and Limits. London: Longman Publishing, 1995.

Hall, Donald. The Paris Review Interviews. New York: Picador, 2006.

North, Michael. “T.S. Eliot: A Chronology.” North 293-95.

Rainey, Lawrence, Ed. The Annotated Waste Land with Eliot’s Contemporary Prose. New Have: Yale University Press, 2005.

Reibetanz, Julia Maniates. A Reading of Eliot’s Four Quartets. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1983.

Thompson, Eric. T.S. Eliot: The Metaphysical Perspective. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.