Eliot’s Animus

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Criticism tries to move literature and ideas in the direction of what should be. Few critics have been more successful in that endeavor that T. S. Eliot, whose poetry and criticism worked in tandem to redefine the way the twentieth century thought about literature. Eliot’s affinity for complexity and difficulty, combined with his longing for order and discipline; his need for clear distinctions that allow each thing to be what it is and not something else; his love of the past and desire to be absorbed into it so as to deflect the existential risk and terror of the present—all these qualities shine out from his criticism as much as from his poetry.</jats:p>