Essay selections offer detailed analyses of Eliot's most important works, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," TheWaste Land, AshWednesday, Four Quartets, "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Murder in the Cathedral, and The Cocktail Party. These essays examine Eliot's poetry and critical writings through the lens of his relations to romanticism and modernism; analyze the psychic dramas contained in his early and unpublished poems; investigate the biographical details informing Eliot's work; assess the Eliot canon and his contributions to poststructuralism; and explore the gothic elements pervading the writer's plays.