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The "otherness" within "ownness": reading T. S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday".

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From: Christianity and Literature
Date: 20020322
Author:Meyer, Kinereth

Although he was often criticized for the near papal authority with which he made his critical pronouncements, T. S. Eliot claimed in "Poetry and Propaganda" (1930) that "our literary judgment is always fallible" According to Eliot, the fallibility of critical judgment is due to an inevitable lack of objectivity--the unavoidable overestimation of "a poetry which embodies a view of life which we can understand and which we accept." (1) For Eliot, balance is the key. "We are not really entitled to prize such poetry so highly," he warned, "unless we also make the effort to enter ...

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