Flawed Modernists: Masculinity & Christianity in Eliot and Joyce

Abstract

Flawed Modernists: Masculinity & Christianity in Eliot and Joyce capitalizes on the resurgence in T.S. Eliot and James Joyce studies by entering the vibrant debates surrounding their representation of gender, colonialism, and faith. The recent availability of Eliot’s Poems (2015), Complete Prose (2014-19), and Letters (ongoing) offers a unique opportunity to understand modernism’s most enigmatic poet; I thus turn to his oft-neglected Bolo writings to gain a fresh perspective on Eliot. The focus on his non-canonical poetry opens peculiar, albeit compelling connections with Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. In these novels, Joyce puts forth paradoxical, idiosyncratic opinions on gender, colonialism, and faith that the scholarship is still trying to comprehend. Critics have yet to fully recognize that Eliot’s goal with Bolo was twofold: Eliot deployed Bolo at times of transition in his life – beginning university (1906), moving to London (1914), converting to Christianity (1927) – to help him establish friendships and to begin untangling complicated topics. As he approached manhood, Eliot circulated Bolo Poems that articulate his skepticism towards American colonialism. During his conversion to Christianity, Eliot turned to Bolo to comprehend Anglo-Catholicism’s emphasis on the via media. In Joyce’s case, Portrait and Ulysses present us with an ironic originality, a type of avant-garde writing that draws much of its inspiration from historical and literary precedents. Portrait seeks to enlarge what qualifies as acceptable masculine behaviour in turn-of-the-century Ireland, doing so by consistently depicting Stephen’s effort to overcome his culture’s prescribed masculine ideals. In Ulysses, Joyce draws on Old Testament wisdom literature to sustain his foray into sexual spirituality in “Circe,” an ironic move given his self-professed hostility toward the church.