Vulgar, Sentimental, and Liberal Criticism: F. J. Furnivall and T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare and Chaucer

Author / Editor
Holbrook, Peter.

Title
Vulgar, Sentimental, and Liberal Criticism: F. J. Furnivall and T. S. Eliot on Shakespeare and Chaucer

Published
Modern Philology 107 (2009): 96-125.

Description
Contrasts the dispassionate modernist criticism of T. S. Eliot with the more emotional criticism of F. J. Furnivall, arguing that Furnivall is "passionately committed to libertarian tradition in English poetry, a tradition whose founts he locates in Chaucer and Shakespeare," two geniuses. Part of the "standard liberal-Protestant cultural history," Furnivall's views are populist and egalitarian where Eliot's are intellectual and elitist.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism