The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound

Rating:
Summary: splendidly theoretical
Review: Ellman's book is one I return to as I teach Eliot and Pound. Her work is powerfully, and usefully, illuminating, especially in its examination of the interrelation between (aspects of) theory and literature. I especially admire her use of Freud and Bataille in her reading of "The Waste Land" (via the notions of the "uncanny" and the "abject"). Her readings do in fact read the poems instead of enacting the masturbatory fantasies that academics can sometimes fall prey to. This is an unjustly unknown book: Ellman's critical intelligence is staggering.