Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T21:15:16.360Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Allusion: the case of Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2012

Hugh Haughton
Affiliation:
University of York
Jason Harding
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

Walton Litz has spoken of T. S. Eliot's ‘almost insatiable appetite for allusion’, observing that ‘one of the most striking aspects’ of Eliot's poetic development between 1915 and 1920 was ‘the thickening of conscious, orchestrated allusion’. Litz draws attention to Eliot's ‘A Note on Ezra Pound’ published in 1918, which contrasts the ‘deliberateness’ and the ‘positive coherence’ of Pound's use of allusions to those of James Joyce, ‘another very learned literary artist’, who ‘uses allusions suddenly and with great speed, part of the effect being the extent of the vista opened to the imagination by the very lightest touch’. Desmond MacCarthy was one of the first reviewers to comment upon Eliot's allusiveness. In a 1921 notice of Ara Vos Prec, bracketing Eliot with Pound, MacCarthy observed that ‘The allusions in their poems are learned, oblique, and obscure; the mottoes they choose for their poems are polyglot, the names that occur to them are symbolic … known only to book-minded people’ (Brooker, 31). Noting that Eliot's ‘phrases are frequently echoes’, MacCarthy claimed Eliot was ‘the reverse of an imitative poet’, his echoes were ‘tuned to a new context which changes their subtlety. He does not steal phrases; he borrows their aroma.’

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×