Eliot’s Significance as a Critic: Then and Now

Abstract

Recent critical theory has contrived not to notice seriously the inaugurators of modern criticism — Eliot, Richards and company. In one sense this is surprising, because what they inaugurated was that probing attentiveness to language that is still at the centre of critical activity. In another sense it is less so. The inaugurators found their congenial theory of meaning in the work of Ogden and Richards whose book The Meaning of Meaning contains a radical rejection of Saussure. Perhaps it is suspected that to resurrect those issues might further check the post-structuralist élan; and it is certainly the case that a just account of Eliot’s criticism will have to take issue with some recent theorists, even at the risk of sounding disputatious.