Reviews

"Brooker is among the most accomplished of Eliot scholars; her list of publications, honors, and accomplishments is staggering. This latest book is an impressively comprehensive, exhaustively researched, and refreshingly new examination of nearly Eliot's entire corpus. Opening unexpected pathways into texts that have been obscured by old, entrenched interpretations, Brooker’s analysis proves lucid, sophisticated, and insightful—a remarkably consistent and coherent book that promises to become, like her others, a permanent part of the critical canon."

"Jewel Spears Brooker excels on Eliot’s religious and moral intelligence. Here is a thinker imbued above all with Dante and the Bible. As an editor of Eliot’s multi-volume Complete Prose, Brooker is ahead in her astute use of the poet’s newly published and soon to be published words."

"Jewel Spears Brooker presents with compelling clarity the primary structure of Eliot’s thought through the dialectical process in which he attempts to reconcile and transcend a succession of disjunctive contraries through his philosophical and religious studies. Drawing on years of studying Eliot’s work, and on previously inaccessible materials in new editions of his poems, prose, and letters, this book is a tour de force for the new era of Eliot scholarship. No few words known to me can pay justice to the major achievement embodied in this book."

"This is a first-rate study. Gathering up a wealth of mature learning, analysis and reflection, Brooker gives us a supremely succinct, accessible work relating the poet-critic’s earliest philosophical readings and critiques to the full span of his poetry. Fresh knowledge and insights abound, culminating in brilliant readings of Four Quartets."

"Written with welcoming clarity and a purposeful sense of focus, this book delineates more clearly than any other how Eliot’s graduate-level study of Bradley, Bergson, and Frazer shaped his poetry and criticism throughout his life. Brooker knows Eliot’s work thoroughly and her book represents the distillation of a lifetime’s expertise."

"This book by one of Eliot’s leading scholars will be enthusiastically welcomed by different audiences. It will serve students as an authoritative, splendidly lucid guide to Eliot’s major poems. At the same time, it will renew scholars’ engagement with the poems’ philosophical underpinnings and movement. Erudite, analytically acute, exceptionally cogent."

"Brooker's familiarity with the detailed chronology of Eliot's intellectual development makes her an exceptionally helpful and authoritative guide... this is a lucid, intricate but informative book, and the more you already know about Eliot, the more you will learn from it."

"Brooker integrates complex philosophical and theological analyses into a deeply sympathetic, emotionally intelligent study. She excels in guiding us along Eliot's intellectual and creative trajectory, using dialectics to draw a portrait of the conflicted mind of a poet who 'abandons nothing en route'... T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination will no doubt become a standard point of reference in the Eliotic critical canon."

"Brooker's work makes skillful use of hitherto unpublished materials."

"Jewel Spears Brooker has written a book fully deserving of those accolades on its dust jacket. Its originality, intellectual heft, and clear, graceful style make it appealing to Eliot's general readership and essential for Eliot scholars. "We are in the dawn of a renaissance in Eliot studies," she writes in her Introduction. T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination is a distinguished contribution to that renaissance, taking it beyond its dawn to full sunrise."