I'm happy to see that strain of cirticism still vital. Even though I don't
agree with it, I have missed it.

Why shouldn't a person be creative in prose?

Cheers,
Peter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 4:24 AM
Subject: Re: TS Eliot: The Metaphysical Poets


> > Peter Montgomery wrote:
> >
> > Seems to me that the context Eliot was using in his famous
> > dissociation quote
> > was of a whole culture, rather than an individual case. Surely on a
> > cultural scale it
> > is a different phenomenon.
>
> I don't know the background Nancy does, but on the face of it Eliot was
> using a psychological term (with its meaning for him in psychologyP to
> describe one or both of two things:
>
> a) whole cultures
>
> b) the cultural _causes_ of a psychological trait
>
> The term is a slippery one, which is perhaps one of the reasons it
> disappeard from psychology.
>
> Eliot, like James (H) and Wordsworth and Pope before him was prettty
> clearly trying to "make room" for his own poetrty. In that he was rather
> successful -- too successful in that he produced a number of oracular
> saying about literature, history, and culture which are mostly pompous
> nonsense and kept too many critics & scholars too long preoccupied with
> makign sense of rather empty formulations. If I recall corrctly Eliot
> himself commented a few times on his unfortunate ability to coin terms
> that caught on too well. "Dissociation of sensibility" as a hisstorical
> analysis (in fact, "sensibility" however defined) was one such
> wild-goose chase.
>
> Carrol