T. S. Eliot and American Philosophy: The Harvard Years

Manju Jain’s innovative study of T. S. Eliot’s Harvard years traces the genesis of his major literary, religious and intellectual preoccupations in his early work as a student of philosophy, and explores its influence on his poetic and critical practice. His concerns were located within the mainstream of Harvard philosophical debates, especially in relation to the controversy of science versus religion. These questions (and Eliot’s work as he grappled with them) point forward to important debates in contemporary philosophy and hermeneutics. Drawing extensively on unpublished sources, Manju Jain offers answers to the questions of why Eliot failed to find satisfaction in an academic career devoted to philosophy, and why he abandoned the speculations of metaphysics for the dogmas of theology.

• New insight into the background to Eliot’s poetry and criticism in his early philosophical work at Harvard • Involves material drawn from unpublished writings by Eliot, otherwise unavailable to most scholars and students • Sigg’s The American T. S. Eliot, on a similar topic, has sold well. Eliot is perennially popular

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Eliot and unitarianism; 2. Eliot and Harvard: ‘An Attenuated Santayana’?; 3. Eliot, Babbitt, and Paris; 4. The ‘Golden Age’ of American Studies: Eliot’s early philosophical studies; 5. Josiah Royce’s seminar; 6. The ‘varieties’ of psychological and mystical experience; 7. Eliot, Bradley and Knowledge and Experience: ‘that magnificent vision, into the apparent chaos’; Conclusion; Appendix; List of courses taken by Eliot while at Harvard; Notes; Bibliography.