The Sacred Wood

by T.S. Eliot

Book Overview

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) is a collection of essays by T.S. Eliot. Although Eliot is primarily recognized as one of the twentieth century's leading English poets, he was also a prolific and highly influential literary critic. This collection, which includes essays on Algernon Charles Swinburne, Hamlet, William Blake, and Dante, is central to Eliot's legacy and vision of art.

In "Tradition and the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1513205544
• ISBN13: 9781513205540
• Release Date: August 2021
• Publisher: Mint Editions
• Length: 122 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Criticism as it should be

It is a great injustice that The Sacred Wood, which ranks amongthe greatest works of literary criticism, has fallen out ofprint...These essays reveal Eliot's mastery of language. While writing on subjects as abstruse as the blank verse of Christopher Marlowe, Eliot maintains supreme eloquence, never stumbling or descending into awkwardness. Moreover, Eliot has managed to keep his subject matter--which at times is quite obscure--very accessible, comprehensible to anyone willing to make the effort to finish any given essay.What sets apart Eliot's essays, however, is neither their eloquence nor their accessibility. Rather, it is that Eliot exemplifies the form that good literary criticism should take. Today's literary criticism is largely descriptive, doing little more than dissecting works and analyzing them. Eliot's criticism is critical--he takes a prominent, and extremely complex literary work or trend, and renders a cogent, logical verdict on it. Eliot is not afraid to lambast the staples of the Western literary pantheon. He almost convinces the reader that Hamlet is a bad play. This is criticism as it should be.