Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation

This study explores the relation between humility and humiliation in the works of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett, offering a literary theory of these concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology. It suggests that humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Eliot and Beckett share an interest in states of abjection, shame, and suffering and possible responses to such states, tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 264 pages
Publication date: 16 August 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Explores the relation between humility and humiliation in the works of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett

Offers the first book-length comparative study of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett

Develops a literary theory of humility and humiliation concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology

Explores the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics

Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal, or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Yet a shared etymology links the words to lowliness and, further down, to the earth. As this study suggests, like the terms in question, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett share an imperfect likeness. Between them is a common interest in states of abjection, shame, and suffering, and possible responses to such states. Tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics, Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism demonstrates how these two major modernists recuperate the affinity between humility and humiliation concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781474479042