T. S. Eliot and the Mother (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

by: Matthew Geary (Author)

Publisher: Routledge
Edition:1st

Publication Date: May 31, 2021

Language: English

Print Length: 320 pages

ISBN-10: 0367759195

ISBN-13: 9780367759193

Book Description

The first full-length study on T. S. Eliot and the mother, this book responds to a shortfall in understanding the true importance of Eliot’s poet-mother, Charlotte Champe Steas, to his life and works. In doing so, it radically rethinks Eliot’s ambivalence towards women. In a context of mother–son ambivalence (simultaneous feelings of love and hate), it shows how his search for belief and love converged with a developing mateal poetics. Importantly, the chapters combine standard literary critical methods and extensive archival research with innovative feminist, mateal and psychoanalytic theorisations of mother–child relationships, such as those developed by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Jessica Benjamin, Jan Campbell and Rozsika Parker. These mateal thinkers emphasise the vital importance and benefit of recognising the pre-Oedipal mother and mateal subjectivity, contrary to traditional, repressive Oedipal models of masculinity. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters look at Eliot’s changing representations and articulations of the mother/ mother–child relationship from his very earliest writings through to the later plays. Focus is given to decisive mid-career works:Ash-Wednesday (1930), ‘Marina’ (1930), ‘Coriolan’ (1931–32) and The Family Reunion (1939), as well as to canonical works The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Notably, the study draws heavily on the wide range of Eliot materials now available, including the new editions of the complete poems, the complete prose and the volumes of letters, which are transforming our perception of the poet and challenging critical attitudes. The book also gives unprecedented attention to Charlotte Eliot’s life and writings and brings her individual female experience and subjectivity to the fore. Significantly, it establishes Charlotte’s death in 1929 as a decisive juncture, marking both Eliot’s New Life and the apotheosis of the feminine symbolised in Ash-Wednesday. Central to this proposition is Geary’s new formulation for recognising and examining a mateal poetics, which also compels a new concept of mateal allegory as a mode mode of literary epiphany. T. S. Eliot and the Mother reveals the role of the mother and the dynamics of mother–son ambivalence to be far more complicated, enduring, changeable and essential to Eliot’s personal, religious and poetic development than previously acknowledged.
The first full-length study on T. S. Eliot and the mother, this book responds to a shortfall in understanding the true importance of Eliot’s poet-mother, Charlotte Champe Steas, to his life and works. In doing so, it radically rethinks Eliot’s ambivalence towards women. In a context of mother–son ambivalence (simultaneous feelings of love and hate), it shows how his search for belief and love converged with a developing mateal poetics. Importantly, the chapters combine standard literary critical methods and extensive archival research with innovative feminist, mateal and psychoanalytic theorisations of mother–child relationships, such as those developed by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Jessica Benjamin, Jan Campbell and Rozsika Parker. These mateal thinkers emphasise the vital importance and benefit of recognising the pre-Oedipal mother and mateal subjectivity, contrary to traditional, repressive Oedipal models of masculinity. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters look at Eliot’s changing representations and articulations of the mother/ mother–child relationship from his very earliest writings through to the later plays. Focus is given to decisive mid-career works:Ash-Wednesday (1930), ‘Marina’ (1930), ‘Coriolan’ (1931–32) and The Family Reunion (1939), as well as to canonical works The Waste Land (1922) and Four Quartets (1943). Notably, the study draws heavily on the wide range of Eliot materials now available, including the new editions of the complete poems, the complete prose and the volumes of letters, which are transforming our perception of the poet and challenging critical attitudes. The book also gives unprecedented attention to Charlotte Eliot’s life and writings and brings her individual female experience and subjectivity to the fore. Significantly, it establishes Charlotte’s death in 1929 as a decisive juncture, marking both Eliot’s New Life and the apotheosis of the feminine symbolised in Ash-Wednesday. Central to this proposition is Geary’s new formulation for recognising and examining a mateal poetics, which also compels a new concept of mateal allegory as a mode mode of literary epiphany. T. S. Eliot and the Mother reveals the role of the mother and the dynamics of mother–son ambivalence to be far more complicated, enduring, changeable and essential to Eliot’s personal, religious and poetic development than previously acknowledged. Read more