Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot

by Cassandra Laity (Editor), Nancy K. Gish (Editor)

Bringing together scholars from a wide range of critical approaches, this collection studies T.S. Eliot's engagement with desire, homoeroticism and feminism in his poetry, prose and drama. In particular, it illuminates the influence of Eliot's poet mother; the dynamic of homosexuality in his work; his poetic identification with passive desire; and his reception by female academics from the early twentieth century to the present. The book will be essential reading for students of Eliot and Modernism, as well as of queer theory and gender studies.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Cassandra Laity is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Drew University, New Jersey. She is also the Co-Editor of Modernism/Modernity

Areas of Specialization: Anglo-American Modernisms, Modern Poetry, Feminist Criticism/Theory, Critical Theory, Late-Victorian Poetry and Fiction.

Courses taught at Drew: CLA: Introduction to Literary Analysis; Western Literature; Victorian Literature; Gender and Literary Modernism; GRADUATE: Modernisms: British and American 20th Century Writers; Romanticism, Literary theory.

Awards: NEH Research Fellowship (1989-1990), Visiting Fellowship, Yale University, Beinecke Manuscript and Rare Book Library (1987), Three-Year Mellon Assistant Professorship, Vanderbilt University (1987-1990).

Reviews

[Tristan]

I really liked this; it was an engaging and largely accessible collection of essays on Eliot's work as regards the title topics. I especially liked Tim Dean's contribution, where impersonality is explored as a means of revealing the self and desire. I found that to be the most convincing, although not the only well-argued essay, including essays that pointedly disagreed with Dean. I was also interested in the history of criticism and reception that explored how women's view of Eliot has changed as the academy has changed, Colleen Lamos's exploration of homoeroticism in the early poetry, and Charles Altieri's attempt to construct an overarching theory of emotion in Eliot's work.
On the whole, there was no essay that totally reshaped my understanding of Eliot's work, but many that provided additional and useful shadings to approaching it, especially since I am generally interested in the place occupied by gender in literature.