Considering Eliot's intense interest in anthropology and his debt to Victorian urban writing and popular American models, this book attempts to throw new light on Eliot's major works, particularly the earlier ones culminating in "The Waste Land" and "Sweeney Agonistes".

Primitive and metropolitan life nourished T. S. Eliot's imagination and emerged as recurrent themes in his work. Examining these twin concerns, Robert Crawford sheds new light on the poet's achievement--particularly those works that culminated in The Waste Land and Sweeney Agonistes--and clarifies Eliot's relentless obsession with "savages" and sophisticates.

'fine study' English Studies