At its annual meeting the Society sponsors a keynote lecture given by an eminent scholar or writer on a topic related to Eliot’s work, influence, or life. The lecture is always open to the public. The table below lists each year’s Memorial Lecture and gives bibliographic information for those that were subsequently published.
| 2021: Robert Pinsky, T. S. Eliot, 1933, 1958, 1962, 2016 View on YouTube. 2020: Robert von Hallberg, Intellectual Eloquence: East Coker View on YouTube 2019: Leonard Diepeveen, T. S. Eliot, Fraud Published in T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 3 (2021), 23-46. 2018: David E. Chinitz, What Is Overannotation? Interrogating the New Eliot Editions 2017: John Haffenden, “Literary Dowsing”: Valerie Eliot and the Editing of The Waste Land Published in T. S. Eliot Studies Annual 2 (2018), 133-49. 2016: Lyndall Gordon, “Footfalls Echo in the Memory”: Eliot’s Expatriation 2015: Jed Esty, Capes and Continents: Eliot’s Frontier and the Rhetoric of Decline 2014: Sarah Cole, In the Cave, in the Valley, in the Cathedral, in the Body: Scales of History in Eliot and Modernism 2013: Jahan Ramazani, T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Prayer Incorporated into “Poetry and Prayer” in Poetry and its Others: News, Prayer, Song, and the Dialogue of Genres (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2014), 126-83. 2012: Daniel Albright, T. S. Eliot’s Non-Euclidean Geometry 2011: Jean-Michel Rabaté, Playing Possum: Symbolic Death and Symboliste Impotence in Eliot’s French Heritage Published in T. S. Eliot, France, and the Mind of Europe, ed. Jayme Stayer (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), 2-23. 2010: Michael Levenson,“and what if she should die some afternoon”: Eliot’s Stage of Violence 2009: Ronald Bush,“Intensity by association”: Eliot’s Passionate Allusions Published in Modernism/modernity 20.4 (2013): 709-27. 2008: Grace Schulman, The “Ariel” Poems: T. S. Eliot and E. McKnight Kauffer 2007: George T. Wright, Some Reflections on Eliot’s Changing Poetic Styles Published as “’Every Poem an Epitaph’: Eliot’s Changing Styles” in Poetic Craft and Authorial Design in Shakespeare, Keats, T.S. Eliot, and Henry James (Lewiston, NY : Mellen, 2011), 139-59. 2006: William F. Blissett, T. S. Eliot and David Jones: Rats, Romans, and Trees 2005: Robert Crawford, More Distant than Stars and Nearer than the Eye Published as “T. S. Eliot’s Daughter” in Proceedings of the British Academy 167: 2009 Lectures (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011), 479-97. 2004: Craig Raine, T. S. Apteryx—The Anti-Romantic Published as “Eliot as Classicist: The Enquiry Into Feelings” in T. S. Eliot (New York: Oxford UP, 2006), 41-74. 2003: Leon Surette, Eliot, Stevens and “Pale Ramon” Published as “Eliot, Stevens, and ‘Pale Ramon’ Fernandez” in The Modern Dilemma: Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, and Humanism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008), 199-233. 2002: Marjorie Perloff, “Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors”: “Gerontion” and the Limits of Language Published as “‘Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors’: Rereading Eliot’s ‘Gerontion’” in Differentials: Poetry, Poetics, Pedagogy (Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2004), 20-38. 2001: Geoffrey Hill, Word Value in F. H. Bradley and T. S. Eliot Published in Collected Critical Writings, ed. Kenneth Haynes (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 532-47. 2000: Carl Phillips, Poetry, Consciousness, Gift: The Model of T. S. Eliot Published in Coin of the Realm: Essays in the Life and Art of Poetry (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf, 2004), 75-92. 1999: Helen Vendler, Historical Contexts: Available Discourses Published as “Inventing Prufrock” in Coming of Age as a Poet (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004), 81-114. 1998: Charles Altieri, Eliot as Theorist of the Emotions Published as “Theorizing Emotions in Eliot’s Poetry and Poetics” in Gender, Desire, and Sexuality in T. S. Eliot, ed. Cassandra Laity and Nancy K. Gish (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), 150-72. 1997: James Longenbach, Recovering a Postmodern Eliot Published as “What Was Postmodern Poetry?” in Modern Poetry After Modernism (New York: Oxford UP, 1997): 3-21. 1996: Marianne Thormählen, “Who devised the torment?” Love in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays Published as “T. S. Eliot—Poet of Love” in Britannien und Europa: Studien zur Literatur-, Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte, ed. Michael Szczekalla (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010), 175-86. 1995: Louis Menand, T. S. Eliot and Modernity Published in New England Quarterly 69.4 (1996): 554-79. 1994: William Harmon, The Fire and the Rose: Eliot and the Popular 1993: Christopher Ricks, Early Eliot 1992: Denis Donoghue, The American T. S. Eliot 1991: Cleo McNelly Kearns, Apocalypse and Wisdom: The Problem of Tone in The Waste Land and Four Quartets Published in Christianity and Literature 41.2 (1992): 121-39. 1990: Shyamal Bagchee, Eliot and Coleridge 1989: Leonard Unger, Actual Times and Actual Places in Eliot’s Poetry Published in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 90-106. 1988: A. D. Moody, T. S. Eliot: The American Strain Published in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 77-89. 1987: James Olney, Memory and Imagination in T. S. Eliot’s Reconstruction of the Past Published as “Mixing Memory and Imagination” in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 60-76. 1986: Grover Smith, T. S. Eliot and the Fascination of Hamlet Published in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 43-59. 1985: Ronald Schuchard, The Savage Comedian and the Sweeney Myth Published in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 27-42. Rpt. in Eliot’s Dark Angel: Intersections of Life and Art. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 87-101. 1984: Jewel Spears Brooker, Substitutes for Religion in the Early Poetry of T. S. Eliot Published in The Placing of T. S. Eliot, ed. Jewel Spears Brooker (Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1991), 11-26. 1983: Earl K. Holt III 1982: Charles Guenther 1981: Robert C. Roach 1980: Marcella Holloway |