Aethereal rumours

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."