| American
Literary Scholarship |
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| ... Overall, the year’s work tends to be historical, comparative, or both, with perhaps the most intense interest centering on the role of influence in both directions—“on” and “of.” But such a generalization is finally inadequate to these contributions. A better sense of the range of sophisticated methodologies and complex problems that continue to revitalize Eliot studies is on display in the omnibus volume that in its totality represents the greatest single contribution of the year to the field, David Chinitz’s A Companion to T. S. Eliot. … A welcome indication of the momentum attained by the “new” Eliot studies, David Chinitz’s A Companion to T. S. Eliot (Wiley) is a definitive, comprehensive, meticulous, and shapely collection of 37 article-length chapters contributed by some of the most recognizable names in modernist poetry scholarship today. The project is set apart by its broad perspective on key themes and concepts, its capacious interest in the various forces exerted by high and low culture alike, and its nuanced historical approach to poems, plays, and criticism. All this, taken together, produces a refined and compelling reassessment of Eliot as a thinker, writer, and editor; it also serves to amplify and extend our existing sense of the major roles Eliot played to characterize, produce, and promote literary modernism. As Chinitz rightly asserts in his preface, this Companion “is not merely the most comprehensive book of its kind, but also the first to synthesize broadly the resurgence of Eliot studies under a new, post-postmodernist critical regime, and with the inspiration of fresh primary material.” Given the remarkable scope and consistent quality of the whole, isolating individual essays for analysis and evaluation is virtually impossible. It is, therefore, most practical to describe the Companion as a whole—and that whole powerfully contests the dated assumption that Eliot studies has exhausted its subject. The nearly 500-page collection is | organized according to three large categories: influences, works, and contexts, each of which displays both the coherence and motivation of an edited volume. The eight chapters of the opening section make fresh claims for the development of a much-studied but still imperfectly understood private public figure. The influencing forces that receive sustained attention in section one include biographical exigencies, literary tradition, the modern metropolis, Eastern as well as Western philosophies, popular culture, anthropology, and imperialism. The 16 chapters that make up the second, exegetical section range from minor verse, plays, and the musical Cats to literary and social essays (pre- and post-1927) and, of course, all of Eliot’s major poems. Finally, the 13 chapters of the third section take on a series of large, often contentious topics with vigor and clarity. The contexts at stake in this final section constellate around ideas of affiliation, authority, bias, and reception, and entail pointed reconsiderations of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, celebrity, classicism, and innovation. The Companion is remarkably user friendly. Its structure, combined with Chinitz’s standardization of reference and style, encourages a reading that can progress almost without interruption from one chapter to the next. Moreover, the arguments, chapter by chapter, demonstrate admirably little repetition in a project this ambitious, even as select endnote references (set apart in small capitals) frequently point out useful connections to other chapters within the volume. For readers with a driving interest in particular problems or texts, the fine index, bibliography, and notes certainly make available an instrumental sampling of, say, discrete arguments and interpretations as well. The result is a Companion that actually offers something for anyone and everyone, tyros and veterans alike. It is, no doubt, a worthwhile and durable contribution. ... Matthew Hofer | |||