The Feeling of Thought: T.S. Eliot’s Programmatic Poetry.

Abstract

The provocative tone of T.S. Eliot’s essays and lectures and their occasional lack of nuance largely account for the poet’s reputation as a figure of authority and as an advocate of a traditional, conservative brand of modernism. But Eliot has never ceased underlining the capacity of poetry to deliver its own poetics, on a mode which allows a sensory approach to thought and meaning and prevents closure. I will try to confront some of the theoretical assertions present in his essays and lectures with his aesthetic “theory” as it incarnates itself, or as it is “sung” in some of his poems, and attempt to show what theory can gain from this peculiar mode of discourse that only poetic writing can generate.

Keywords

• tradition
• intertextuality
• formulation
• feeling
• thought
• discourse