T.S. Eliot's life took him from the United States to England, from philosophy to poetry and from modern scepticism to traditional Christianity. Colin McCabe's' study places Eliot' poetry in the context of these journeys and uses Eliot's life to illuminate his poetry. This poetry, although very modest in quantity, remains one of the great artistic triumphs of the English language. In his ironic accounts of his adolescent desire in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady", he performs masculine self-doubt with a pathos and wit which has yet to be surpassed in poem, book or...

In The Eloquence of the Vulgar, the distinguished academic Colin MacCabe reflects on cultural change from Shakespeare to Derek Jarman, on the institutional forms of knowledge, on the links between popular and elite art, and on the role of the intellectual in contemporary life.

A radical argument emerges from the book's diverse concerns. Cinema and television - the new and democratic art forms of the twentieth century - demand a fundamental rethinking of our concepts of language and culture. What is at stake is the very idea of a liberal and humane education.