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Description of  T. S. Eliot and the Mother (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)

0367759195 epub The first full-length study on T. S. Eliot and the mother, this book responds to a shortfall in understanding the true importance of Eliots poet-mother, Charlotte Champe Stearns, to his life and works. In doing so, it radically rethinks Eliots ambivalence towards women. In a context of motherson ambivalence (simultaneous feelings of love and hate), it shows how his search for belief and love converged with a developing maternal poetics. Importantly, the chapters combine standard literary critical methods and extensive archival research with innovative feminist, maternal and psychoanalytic theorisations of motherchild relationships, such as those developed by Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Jessica Benjamin, Jan Campbell and Rozsika Parker. These maternal thinkers emphasise the vital importance and benefit of recognising the pre-Oedipal mother and maternal subjectivity, contrary to traditional, repressive Oedipal models of masculinity. Through this interdisciplinary approach, the chapters look at Eliots changing representations and articulations of the mother/ motherchild relationship from his very earliest writings through to the later plays. Focus is given to decisive mid-career works: Read more