Title: Aethereal rumours
First published: 1998
Description: This study combines ideas from many different disciplines and historical periods to yield a broad and penetrating analysis of T. S. Eliot's thinking about the relation between the material and spiritual worlds. Lockerd demonstrates that Eliot developed a poetic theory based on his antidualistic belief that mind and matter are not entirely separate, a theory that emphasizes natural symbols such as the elements and the seasonsnonarbitrary symbols rooted in our physical experience.

The book thus offers a forceful response to those who would see Eliot as a precursor of so-called postmodern literary theory. Instead, Lockerd finds in Eliot's poetic theory and practice an attempt to achieve what is called in Four Quartets the "impossible union / Of spheres of existence."
Subjects: History, Literature and science, Knowledge, Poetics, Physics in literature, Physics, Et la physique, 18.05 English literature, Literatuurtheorie, Physique dans la littérature, Gedichten, Theologie, Histoire, Poétique, Physik, Littérature et sciences, Natuurkunde, Eliot, t. s. (thomas stearns), 1888-1965, Knowledge and learning
Places: United States, Great Britain
People: T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3509.L43 Z6933 1998