Eliot, T.S.;
The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays
Dover Publications 1997, 176 pages
ISBN 0486299368
topics: | literature | essays | poetry | critic
The Sacred Wood (1920), announced the arrival of Eliot as the critic, with his commentaries on Swinburne (" The faults of style are, of course, personal; the tumultuous outcry of adjectives, the headstrong rush of undisciplined sentences, are the index to the impatience and perhaps laziness of a disorderly mind") and the essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, or on Hamlet and his problems ("more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting, than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the "Mona Lisa" of literature.") Acerbic, occasionally insightful, but eminently readable. This volume collects some essays not in the original text, with typically Dover-esque lack of editorial intent. One essay, "Poets on poetry", is mentioned in the blurb at the back but seems to have lost its way during production; it's certainly not there in this edition. Other than this, there is no other editorial comment and the reader is left to figure out the provenance and coherence for the added essays.
The Sacred Wood : Essays on Poetry and Criticism Introduction The Perfect Critic Imperfect Critics Swinburne As Critic A Romantic Aristocrat The Local Flavour A Note on the American Critic The French Intelligence Tradition and the Individual Talent The Possibility of a Poetic Drama Euripides and Professor Murray “Rhetoric” and Poetic Drama Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe Hamlet and His Problems Ben Jonson Philip Massinger Swinburne As Poet Blake Dante Andrew Marvell John Dryden The Metaphysical Poets also: The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism http://library.nu/docs/LNIKMZOCSJ/The%20Use%20of%20Poetry%20%26amp%3B%20the%20Use%20of%20Criticism