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Title: "Filled with fancies and empty of meaning"
Review: Couldn't agree more with the above review. I found this trite, dull, and hugely uninspiring. Telling us repeatedly that Eliot was "brilliant" and constantly explicating the poems as Christian sermons is not at all helpful. Telling us that "because landscape functions as a major symbol, lack of knowledge about the actual sources, as well as insufficient or even incorrect knowledge, can distort or even reverse its symbolic import", is even less helpful -- particularly when, as it turns out, she herself gets her sources wrong (cf. the mistaken identification of the Lady in The Dry Salvages, later clarified by Helen Gardner).If there is any merit in this book it lies in the nice little anthology of soundbites the author has gleaned from other, more able critics.Oh, and the photos of course :p
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