A ‘Raid on the Absolute’: Dogmatic Tradition and Mystical Experience in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Criticism

Abstract

This chapter examines T. S. Eliot’s engagement with the debates surrounding the modernist crisis in the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. It offers a new perspective on Eliot and religion, demonstrating that his early interest in mysticism and the question of how to interpret religious experience was shaped by the ongoing theological controversies. The chapter discusses a wide range of Eliot’s writings, from his early essays on philosophy and religion, reviews, and commentaries, to his later critical essays, lectures, and correspondence, to show that the impact of contemporary theological debates on Eliot’s critical and poetic works was deeper and more sustained than has been previously recognised. Eliot’s debate with John Middleton Murry, his engagement with the neo-Thomist aesthetics of Jacques Maritain, and his initial disagreement with, and subsequent reassessment of Henri Bremond’s theory of ‘pure poetry’ demonstrate that theological controversies shaped Eliot’s views on aesthetics and poetics. As the chapter shows, they also provided him with a springboard for a poetic exploration of theological questions in poems such as ‘The Death of Saint Narcissus’, ‘Journey of the Magi’, and ‘Marina’.