Poetics of Un/feeling

T. S. Eliot, Coleridge, Shakespeare

Abstract

This article contributes to the re-assessment of the role of affect in the writings of T. S. Eliot and argues that Eliot’s thinking was shaped by earlier—notably Coleridgean—discussions of the feeling and writing self. It offers a dialogical reading of the two poet-critics, in which Coleridge’s interpretation of Venus and Adonis and the typist scene of The Waste Land play central parts.